The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke

XXVII.

That the aforesaid direction did convey in it such evident and cogent reason, and was so far enforced by justice to individuals, and by regard to the peace and happiness of the natives, as well as by the common decorum to be observed in all the transactions of government, that the said Hastings ought to have yielded a cheerful obedience thereto, even if he had not been by a positive statute," and his relation of servant to the company, bound to that just submission. Yet the said Hastings did, without denying or evading any one of the reasons assigned by the court of directors, or controverting the scandalous motives assigned by them for his conduct, contumaciously refuse obedience to the above positive order, on pretence, that the nabob, who, he had declared it on record "to be as "visible as the light of the sun, is a mere pageant, "and without even the shadow of authority," did dissent from the same; and he did encourage the said nabob, or rather the eunuchs, the corrupt ministers of Munny Begum, to oppose himself and themselves to the authority of the said court of directors; by which means the arrangement, three times either ratified, or expressly ordered by them, was wholly defeated; the aforesaid corrupt system was continued; Mahomed Reza Khân was not restored to his office; and a lesson was taught to the natives of all ranks, that the declared approbation, the avowed sanction, and the decided authority of the court of directors, were wholly nugatory to their protection against the corrupt influence of their servants.

XXVIII.

That the said Warren Hastings, on a reconciliation with Mr. Francis, one of the council general, who made it a condition thereof, that certain of the company's orders should be obeyed, and that Mahomed Reza Khân should be restored to his offices, did, a considerable time after, notwithstanding the pretended reluctance of the nabob, and his pretended freedom, make, for his convenience in the said accommodation, the arrangement, which he had unwarrantably and illegally refused to the orders of the court of directors; and did, of his own authority and that of the board, restore Mahomed Reza Khân to his offices.

XXIX.

That soon after the departure of the said Mr. Francis he did again deprive the said Mahomed Reza Khan of his said offices, and did make several great changes in the constitution of the criminal justice in the said country; and after having, under pretence of the nabob's sufficiency for the management of his own affairs, displaced, without any specifick charge, trial, or enquiry whatsoever, the said Mahomed Reza Khân, he did submit the said nabob to the entire direction, in all parts of his concerns, of a resident of his own nomination, Sir John Doyley, Bart. and did order an account

of the most minute parts of his domestick economy to be made out, and to be delivered to the said Sir John Doyley, in the following words, contained in a paper by him intitled, INSTRUCTIONS from the governour-general to the nabob Mobarek ul Dowla, respecting his conduct in the management of his affairs: you will be pleased to direct your mutta seddies to form an account of the "fixed sums of your monthly expences, such as servants' wages in the different departments, pensions, and other allowances, as well as of the "estimated amount of variable expences, to be "delivered to Sir John Doyley for my inspection. "I have given such orders to Sir John Doyley as "will enable him to propose to you such reduc"tions of the pensions and other allowances, and "such a distribution of the variable expences, as "shall be proportionable to the total sum of your I monthly income; and I must request you will "conform to it." And he did, in the subsequent articles of his said instructions, order the whole management to be directed by Sir John Doyley, subject to his own directions as aforesaid; and did even direct what company he should keep; and did throw reflections on some persons, in places the nearest to him, as of bad character and base origin-persons, whom he should decline to name as such," unless he heard, that they still "availed themselves of his goodness to retain the places, which they improperly hold near his person." And he did particularly order the said nabob not to admit any English, but such as the said Sir John Doyley should approve, to his presence; and did repeat the said order in the following peremptory manner: you must forbid any person of that nation to be intruded into

your presence, without his introduction." And he did require his obedience in the following authoritative style: "I shall think myself obliged to "interfere in another manner, if you neglect it."

XXX.

That he the said Warren Hastings did insult the captive condition of the said nabob by informing him, in his imperious instructions aforesaid, that this total, blind, and implicit obedience, in every respect whatsoever, to Sir John Doyley and himself personally, and without any reference to the board, "was the very conditions of the compliance "of the governour-general and council with his "late requisition;" which requisition was, that he should enjoy the free and uncontrouled management of his own affairs. And though the said captive did offer, as he the said Hastings himself admits, four lacks of his stipend, at that time reduced to sixteen lacks, for the free use of the remainder, yet he did place him the said nabob in the state of servitude in the said instructions laid down, but a very short time after he had assumed and used the said nabob's independent rights as a ground for refusing to obey the company's orders; and although he has declared, or pretended, on another occasion, which he would have thought similar,

XXXI.

That the said Warren Hastings did order the said stipend (which was to be distributed, in the minutest particular, according to the said Hastings's personal directions) to be paid monthly, not to any officer of the nabob, but to the said resident Sir John Doyley. And whereas the governourgeneral and council did, on the appointment of Mahomed Reza Khân, according to their duty instruct him, that "he do conform to the orders of "the company, which direct, that an annual ac"count of the nabob's expences be transmitted, through the resident at the durbar, for the inspection of this board,"-the said Hastings, in making his new establishment in favour of his resident, did wholly omit the said instruction, and did confine the said communication to himself privately. And in fact it does not appear, that any account whatsoever of the disposition of the said large sum, exceeding £.160,000 sterling a year, has been laid before the board, or at least that any such account has been transmitted to the court of directors; and it is not 'fitting, that any British servant of the company should have the management of any publick money, much less of" so great a sum, without a publick well vouched account of the specifick expenditure thereof.

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XXXIII.

That the president and select committee (Lord Clive being then president) did approve of the whole substantial part of the said regulation (the diary excepted); and the principle, in all matters of account, ought to have been strictly adhered to, whatever limitations may have been given to the office of resident. Yet he the said Warren Hastings, in defiance of the aforesaid good rules, orders, and late precedent in conformity to the same, did not only withhold any order for the purpose, but, in order to carry on the business of the said durbar in a clandestine manner for his own purposes, did, as aforesaid, exclude all English from an intercourse with the nabob, who might carry complaints or representations to the board, or the court of directors, of his condition or the conduct of the resident; and did further, to defeat all possible publicity, insinuate to him to give the preference to verbal communication above letters, in the words following of the 9th article of his instructions to the nabob: " although I desire to receive your "letters frequently, yet, as many matters will occur, which cannot be so easily explained by letters as by conversation, I desire, that you will on such occasions give your orders to him "respecting such points as you may desire to "have imparted to me; and I, postponing every "other concern, will give an immediate and the "most satisfactory reply concerning them." Accordingly, no relation whatsoever has been received by the court of directors of the said nabob's affairs; nor any account of the money monthly paid, except from publick fame, which reports, that his affairs are in great disorder, his servants unpaid, and many of them dismissed, and all the Mussulmen dependent on his family in a state of indigence.

XVIII. THE MOGUL DELIVERED UP TO THE MAHRATTAS.

THAT Shah Allum, the prince, commonly called the Great Mogul, or, by eminence, The King, is, or lately was, in the possession of the ancient capital of Hindostan; and though without any considerable territory, and without a revenue

sufficient to maintain a moderate state, he is still much respected and considered; and the custody of his person is eagerly sought by many of the princes in India, on account of the use to be made of his title and authority; and it was for the interest of the East India company, that, while on one hand no wars shall be entered into in support of his pretensions, on the other no steps should be

taken, which may tend to deliver him into the hands of any of the powerful states of that country; but that he should be treated with friendship, good faith, and respectful attention.

II.

| Warren Hastings had formerly declared," that "with him [the Mogul] our connexion had been a long time suspended, and he wished never to see it renewed, as it had proved a fatal drain to "the wealth of Bengal, and the treasury of the company, without yielding one advantage or possible resource, even of remote benefits, in That Warren Hastings, in contradiction to this return," the said Warren Hastings did neverthesafe, just, and honourable policy, strongly pre-less, on or about the month of March 1783, with scribed and enforced by the orders of the court of directors, did (at a time when he was engaged in a negociation, the declared purpose of which was to give peace to India) concur with the captaingeneral of the Mahratta state, called Madajee Scindia, in hostile designs against the few remaining territories of that same Mogul emperour, by virtue of whose grant the company actually possess the government, and enjoy the revenues, of great provinces, and also against the possessions of a Mahomedan chief called Nudjif Cawn, a person of much merit with the East India company; in acknowledgment of which they had granted him a pension, included in the tribute due to the king, and, together with that tribute, taken from him by the said Warren Hastings, though expressly guarantied to him by the company. With both these powers the company had been in friendship, and were actually at peace at the time of the said clandestine concurrence in a design against them; and the said Hastings hath since declared, that the right of one of them, namely, "the right of "the Mogul emperour, to our assistance has been constantly acknowledged."

III.

That the said Warren Hastings, at the time of his treacherous concurrence in a design against a power, which he was himself of opinion we were bound to assist, and against whom there was no doubt he was bound neither to form nor to concur in any hostile attempt, did give a caution to Colonel Muir, to whom the negociation aforesaid was intrusted on the part of the company, against "inserting any thing in the treaty, which might expressly mark our knowledge of his [the Mah"ratta general's views] or concurrence in them." Which said transaction was full of duplicity and fraud; and the crime of the said Hastings therein is aggravated by his having some years before withheld the tribute, which by treaty was solemnly agreed to be paid to the said king, on pretence that he had thrown himself, for the recovery of his city of Delhi, on the protection of the Mahrattas, whom the said Warren Hastings then called the natural enemies of the company, and the growth of whose power he then alleged to be highly dangerous to the interest of this kingdom in India.

IV.

That after having concurred, in the manner before mentioned, in a design of the Mahrattas against the Mogul; and notwithstanding he the said

the privity and consent of the members of the board, but by no authoritative act, dispatch, as agents of him the governour-general only, and not as agents of the governour-general and council, as they ought to have been, certain persons, among whom were Major Browne and Major Davy, to the court of the king at Delhi, and did there enter into certain engagements with the said king by the means of those agents, and did carry on certain private and dangerous intrigues for various purposes, particularly for making war in favour of the said king, against some powers or princes not precisely described, but which, as may be inferred from a subsequent correspondence, were certain Mahomedan princes in the neighbourhood of Delhi in amity with the company, and some of them at that time in the actual service, and in the apparent confidence and favour of the said Mogul; and he did order Major Browne to offer to the Mogul king to provide for the entire expence of any troops the Shah [the said king] might require; and the proposal was accordingly accepted with the conditions annexed; by which proposal, and acceptance thereof, the East India company was placed in a situation of great and perplexing difficulty, since either they were to engage, at an unlimited expence, in new wars, contrary to their orders, contrary to their general declared policy, and contrary to the published resolutions of the house of commons, and wholly incompatible with the state of their finances; or, to preserve peace, they must risk the imputation of a new violation of faith, by departing from an agreement made on the voluntary proposal of their own government; the agent of the said Hastings having declared, in his letter to the said Hastings, by him communicated to the board, "that the business of assisting the Shah [the Mogul emperour] can and must go on, if we wish to be secure in India, or regarded as a "nation of faith and honour."

That the said Warren Hastings did, on the 20th day of January 1784, send in circulation to the other members of the council a letter to him from his agent, Major Browne, dated at Delhi on the 30th of December 1783, viz. that letter, to which the foregoing references are made, in which the said Browne did directly press, and indirectly (though sufficiently and strongly) suggest several highly dangerous measures for realizing the general offers and engagements of the said Warren Hastings ;--proposing, that besides a proportion of field-artillery, and a train of battering cannon

for the purpose of sieges, six regiments of sepoys | in the company's service should be transferred to that of the said king, and that certain other corps should also be raised for the said service in the English provinces and dependencies, to be immediately under the king's [the Mogul's] orders, and to be maintained by assignments of territorial revenue within the province of Oude, a dependent member of the British government, but with a caution against having any British officer with the same; the said Major Browne expressing his caution as followeth ;-" if any European officer be "with this corps, a very nice judgment indeed "must direct the choice; for scarce any are in "the smallest degree fit for such employ, but "much more likely to do harm than good.' And the letter aforesaid being without any observation thercon, or any disavowal of the matters of fact, or of the counsels so strongly and authoritatively delivered therein by the said Warren Hastings's agent, and without any mark of disapprobation of any part of his plan, whether that of the assignment of territory belonging to the company's allies for the maintenance of troops, which were to be by that plan put under the orders of a foreign independent power, or that of employing the said troops without any British officer with them; or for his alarming observation by him entered on the company's records, which, if not an implied censure on the nature of the service, in which British officers are supposed improper to be trusted, is a strong reflection on the character of the British officers, which was to render them unfit to be employed in an honourable service--the said Warren Hastings did thereby give a countenance to the said unwarrantable and dangerous proposals and reflections.

VI.

That, a considerable time before the production and circulation of Major Browne's letter, the said Hastings did enter a minute of consultation, containing a proposition similar in the general intent to that in the said letter contained for assisting the Mogul with a military force; but the other members of the board did disagree thereto, and being alarmed at the disposition so strongly shewn by the said Hastings to engage in new wars, and dangerous foreign connexions, and possibly having intelligence of the proceedings of his agent, did call upon him to produce his instructions to Major Browne; and he did on the 5th of October 1783, and not before, enter on the consultations a certain paper, purporting to be the instructions, which he had given to Major Browne the preceding March, the time of his the said Browne's appointment, in which pretended instructions no direction whatsoever was given to the effect of his the said Hastings's minute of consultation, or propounded; that is to say, no power was given in the said instructions to make a direct offer of military aid to the Mogul, or to form the arrangements stated by the said Browne, in his letter to the said Hastings, as having been made by the express authority of

the said Hastings himself. But the said instructions contained nothing further on that subject but a conditional direction, that, in case a military force should be required for the Mogul's aid or protection, the major is to know the service, on which it is to be employed, and the resources, from whence it is to be paid; and the instructions produced as his real instructions by the said Hastings are so guarded as to caution the said Browne against taking any part in the intrigues of those, who are about the king's person. By which letters, instructions, and transactions, compared with each other, it appears, that the said Warren Hastings, after six months' delay in entering of (contrary to the company's order) any instructions to the said Browne, did at last enter a false paper as the true, or that he did give other secret instructions totally different from, and even opposite to, his publick ostensible instructions, thereby to deceive the council, and to carry on, with less obstructions, dark and dangerous intrigues, contrary to the orders of the court of directors, to the true policy of this kingdom, and to the safety of the British possessions in the East.

VII.

That the said letter from Major Browne was by the said Warren Hastings transmitted to the court of directors, without being accompanied by any part of the previous correspondence; by which wilful concealment the said Warren Hastings is guilty of an high and criminal disrespect to the court of directors, and of a most flagrant breach and violation of their orders, which he was bound by an act of parliament to obey.

VIII.

That the said Hastings having early in the year 1784 procured to himself a deputation to act in

the

upper provinces, the council, being well aware of his disposition to engage in unwarrantable designs against the neighbouring states, did expressly confine his powers to the circumstance of his actual residence within the company's provinces ; but it appears, that ways were found out, by which he hoped to defeat the precautions of the board: for the said Warren Hastings did write from Lucknow, the capital of the country of Oude, to the court of directors a certain postscript of a letter, dated the 4th of May 1784, in which he informs the court, that the son and heir-apparent of the Great Mogul had taken refuge with him, and the nabob of Oude; that he had a conference with that prince on the 10th of the same month of May, no person being either present or within hearing" during the same; and that in the said conference the prince had informed him of the distresses of his father, and his wish for the relief of the king, and the restoration of the dominions of his house, as well as to rescue him from the power of certain persons not named, who degraded him into a mere instrument of their interested and sor

did designs; and that, on the failure of his appli- | own agent, and this the publick opinion of it, alcation to him, he would either return to his father, or proceed to Calcutta, and thence to England; and that the said Warren Hastings did give him an answer to the following effect; "that our [the "British] government had just obtained relief "from a state of universal warfare, and required a "term of repose; that our whole nation was weary "of war, and dreaded the renewal of it, and would "be equally alarmed at any movement, of which "it could not see the issue or progress, but which might eventually tend to create new hostilities; "that he came hither [to Lucknow] with a limited authority, and could not, if he chose it, engage "in any business of that nature without the concurrence of his colleagues in office, whom he "believed would be averse to it; that he would represent the same to the joint members of his own government, and wait their determination. "In the mean time he advised the prince to make "advances to Madajee Scindia, both because our government was in intimate and sworn con"nexion with him, and because he was the effec"tual head of the Mahratta State; besides that "he, the said Warren Hastings, feared his [Scin"dia's] taking the other side of the question, un"less he was early prevented."

IX.

That, in the statement of this discourse, there is much criminal reserve towards the court of directors, it not appearing distinctly what the objects were, nor who the persons concerned, nor what the side was, which he apprehended the Mahrattas might take, if not prevented by his advances; and in the discourse itself there were many particulars highly criminal; namely, for that in the said conversation, in which he describes himself as declining a compliance with the request of the prince on account of the aversion (therein strongly expressed) of his colleagues, of the company, and of the whole British nation, to engage in any measures, which might even eventually lead to "hostilities ;"—he spoke to the prince as if he had been entirely ignorant of the offers, which but five months before had been made to the king his father on the part of that very government (whose repugnance to such measures he then for the first time chose to profess, but which he always had known) through Major Browne, the company's representative at the court of Delhi, " to provide "for the entire expence of any troops, which "the Shâh [the king] might require ;" and that this was "what the resident had always proposed to the king, and his confidential minis"ters;"-the said Browne further declaring, "that if, in consequence of the said proposals, "certain arrangements for the Shâh's service, "by troops, were not immediately ordered, in "his opinion all our [English government's] offers and promises will be considered as false "and insidious." This being the known state of the business, as represented by the said Hastings's

though to impose on the ignorance of the prince with regard to the proceedings at his father's court would have been unworthy in itself, yet he, the said Warren Hastings, could not hope to succeed in such imposition, as in the postscript aforesaid he represents the said prince [who was the king's eldest son, and thirty-six years of age] as a person of considerable qualifications, and perfectly acquainted with the transactions at his father's court, and as one, who had long held the principal and most active part in the little, that remained of the administration of Shah Allum. And the said Hastings conferring with a prince so well instructed, without making the slightest allusions to his said positive and recent engagements, or without giving any explanation with regard to them, the said Warren Hastings must appear to the said prince either as a person not only contracting engagements, but actually being the first mover and proposer of them, without any authority from his colleagues, and against theirs and the general inclination of the British nation, and on that ground not to be trusted or that he had used this plea of disagreement between him and his council as a pretence, set up without colour or decency, for a gross violation of his own engagements; leaving the princes and states of the country no solid ground, on which they can or ought to contract with the company, to the utter destruction of all publick confidence, and to the equal disgrace of the national candour, integrity, and wisdom.

That, in a letter dated from the same place, Lucknow, the 16th of the following June 1784, the said Warren Hastings informs the court of directors, that Major Browne, their agent to the Mogul, had arrived there in the character also of agent from the Mogul, with two sets of instructions from two opposite parties in his ministry, which instructions were directly contrary to each other; the first, which were the ostensible instructions, being to engage the said Hastings, in the Mogul's name, to enter into a treaty of mutual alliance with the chief of the country, then minister to the said Mogul, called Affrasaib Khân; the second were from another principal person, called Mudjed ul Dowla, also a minister of the said Mogul, (but styled in the said letter confidential, for distinction,) which were directly destructive of the former; and the said latter instructions, to which it seems credence was to be given, were sent "under the most solemn adjurations of secrecy." The purpose of these latter and secret instructions was to require the company's aid in freeing the Mogul from the oppressions of his servants, namely, from the oppressions of the said Affrasaib, between whom and the company Major Browne (at once agent to that company, and to two opposite factions in the Mogul's court) accepted a power to make a treaty of mutual alliance under the sanction of his sovereign; and it does not ap

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The Works of the Right Hon. Edmund Burke: With a Biographical and ..., Volumen2