The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12)

XIV. That the principle, so far as the same hath been directly avowed, of the said proceedings at the Mogul's court, was as altogether irrational, and the pretended object as impracticable, as the means taken in pursuit of it were fraudulent and dishonorable, namely, the restoration of the Mogul in some degree to the dignity of his situation, and to his free agency in the conduct of his affairs. For the said Hastings, at the very time in which he did with the greatest apparent earnestness urge the purpose which he pretended to have in view with regard to the dignity and liberty of the Mogul emperor, did represent him as a person wholly disqualified, and even indisposed, to take any active part whatsoever in the conduct of his own affairs, and that any attempt for that purpose would be utterly impracticable; and this he hath stated to the Court of Directors as a matter of public notoriety, in his said letter of the 16th of June, 1784, in the following emphatical and decisive terms.

"You need not be told the character of the king, whose inertness, and the habit of long-suffering, has debased his dignity and the fortunes of his house beyond the power of retrieving either the one or the other. Whilst his personal repose is undisturbed, he will prefer to live in the meanest state of indigence, under the rule of men whose views are bounded by avarice and the power which they derive from his authority, rather than commit any share of it to his own sons, (though his affection for them is boundless in every other respect,) from a natural jealousy, founded on the experience of a very different combination of those circumstances which once served as a temptation and example of unlawful ambition in the princes of the royal line. His ministers, from a policy more reasonable, have constantly employed every means of influence to confirm this disposition, and to prevent his sons from having any share in the distribution of affairs, so as to have established a complete usurpation of the royal prerogative under its own sanction and patronage."

XV. That the said Warren Hastings, having given this opinion of the sovereign for whose freedom he pretended so anxious a concern, did describe the minister with whom he had long acted in concurrence, and from whom he had just received the extraordinary secret embassy aforesaid for the purpose of effecting the deliverance of his master, the Mogul, from the usurpations of his ministers, as follows. "The first minister, Mudjed ul Dowlah, is totally deficient in every military quality, conceited of his own superior talents, and formed to the practice of that crooked policy which, generally defeats its own purpose, but sincerely attached to his master." The reality of the said attachment was not improbable, but altogether useless, as the said minister was the only one among the principal persons about the king who (besides the total want of all military and civil ability) possessed no territories, troops, or other means of serving and supporting him, but was himself solely upheld by his influence over his master: neither doth the said Hastings free him, any more than the persons more efficient, who were to be destroyed, from a disposition to alienate the king from an attention to his affairs, and from all confidence in his own family; but, on the contrary, he brings him forward as the very first among the instances he adduces to exemplify the practices of the ministers against their sovereign and his children.

XVI. That the said Warren Hastings, recommending in general terms, and yet condemning in detail, every part of his own pretended plan, as impracticable in itself, and as undertaken in favor of persons all of whom he describes as incapable, and the principal as indisposed to avail himself thereof, must have had some other motives for this long, intricate, dark, and laborious proceeding with the Mogul, which must be sought in his actions, and the evident drift and tendency thereof, and in declarations which were brought out by him to serve other purposes, but which serve fully to explain his real intentions in this intrigue.

XVII. That the other members of the Council-General having abundantly certified their averseness to his intrigues, and even having shown apprehensions of his going personally to the Mogul and the Mahrattas for the purpose of carrying on the same, the said Hastings was driven headlong to acts which did much more openly indicate the true nature and purpose of his machinations. For he at length recurred directly, and with little disguise, to the Mahrattas, and did open an intrigue with them, although he was obliged to confess, in his letter aforesaid of the 16th June, 1784, that the exception which he contended to be implied in the orders of the Court of Directors forbidding the intermeddling in the disputes of "the country powers," namely, "powers not permanent," did by no means apply to the Mahrattas; and he informs the Court of Directors that he did, on the very first advice he received of the flight of the Mogul's son, write to Mr. James Anderson to apprise the Mahratta chief, Sindia, of that event,—"for which as he was unprepared, he desired his [the said Sindia's] advice for his conduct on the occasion of it." Which method of calling for the advice of a foreign power to regulate his political conduct, instead of being regulated therein by the advice of the British Council and the standing orders of the Court of Directors, was a procedure highly criminal; and the crime is aggravated by his not communicating the said correspondence to the Council-General, as by his duty he was bound to do; but it does abundantly prove his concert with the Mahrattas in all that related to his negotiations in the Mogul court, which were carried on agreeably to their advice, and in subserviency to their views and purposes.

XVIII. That, in consequence of the cabal begun with the Mahrattas, the said chief, Sindia, did send his "familiar and confidential ministers" to him, the said Hastings, being at Lucknow, with whom the said Hastings did hold several secret conferences, without any secretary or other assistant: and the said Hastings hath not conveyed to the Court of Directors any minutes thereof, but hath purposely involved even the general effect and tendency of these conferences in such obscurity that it is no otherwise possible to perceive the drift and tendency of the same, but by the general scope of councils and acts relative to the politics of the Mogul and of the Mahrattas together, and by the final event of the whole, which is sufficiently visible. For

XIX. That the said Hastings had declared, in his said letter of the 16th June, 1784, that the Mogul's right to our assistance had been constantly acknowledged, that the Mogul had been oppressed by the lesser Mahomedan princes in the character of his officers of state and military commanders, and he did plainly intimate that the said Mogul ought to be relieved from that servitude. And he did, in giving an account to the Court of Directors of the conferences aforesaid, assure them that "his inclinations [the inclinations of the Mahratta chief aforesaid] were not very dissimilar from his own"; and that "neither in this nor in any other instance would he suffer himself to be drawn into measures which shall tend to weaken their connection, nor in this even to oppose his [the said chiefs] inclinations": the said Hastings well knowing, as in his letter to Colonel Muir of the – he has confessed, that the inclinations of the said Sindia were to seize on the Mogul's territories, and that he himself did secretly concur therein, though he did not formally insert his concurrence in the treaty with the said Mahratta chief. It is plain, therefore, that he did all along concur with the Mahrattas in their designs against the said king and his ministers, under the treacherous pretence of supporting the authority of the former against the latter, and did contrive and effect the ruin of them all. For, first, he did give evil and fraudulent counsel to the heir-apparent of the Mogul "to make advances to the Mahrattas," when he well knew, and had expressly concurred in, the designs of that state against his father's, the Mogul's, dominions; and further to engage and entrap the said prince, did assert that "our government" (meaning the British government) "was in intimate and sworn connection with Mahdajee Sindia," when no alliance, offensive or defensive, appears to exist between the said Sindia and the East India Company, nor can exist, otherwise than in virtue of some secret agreement between him, the said Sindia, and Warren Hastings, entered into by the latter without the knowledge of his colleagues and the government, and never communicated to the Court of Directors. And, secondly, he did, in order to further the designs of the Mahrattas, contrive and effect the ruin of the said Mogul and his authority, by setting on foot, through the aforesaid Major Browne, sundry perplexed and intricate negotiations, contrary to public faith, and to the honor of the British nation; by which he did exceedingly increase the confusion and disorders of the Mogul's court, exposing the said Mogul to new indignities, insults, and distresses, and almost all of the northern parts of India to great and ruinous convulsions, until three out of four of the principal chieftains, some of them possessing the territories lately belonging to Nudjif Khân, and maintaining among them eighty thousand troops of horse and foot, and some of which chiefs wore the ministers aforesaid, being cut off by their mutual dissensions, and the fort of Delhi being at length delivered to the Mahrattas, the said Sindia became the uncontrolled ruler of the royal army, and the person of the Mogul, with the use of all his pretensions and claims, fell into the hands of a nation already too powerful, together with an extensive territory, which entirely covers the Company's possessions and dependencies on one side, and particularly those of the Nabob of Oude.

XX. That the circumstances of these countries did, in the opinion of the said Warren Hastings himself, sufficiently indicate to him the necessity of not aggrandizing any power whatsoever on their borders, he having in the aforesaid letter of the 16th June given a deliberate opinion of the situation of Oude in the words following: "That, whilst we are at peace with the powers of Europe, it is only in this quarter that your possessions under the government of Bengal are vulnerable." And he did further in the said letter state, that, "if things had continued as they had been to that time, with a divided government," (viz., the Company's and the Vizier's, which government he had himself established, and under which it ever must in a great degree remain, whilst the said country continues in a state of dependence,) "the slightest shock from a foreign hand, or even an accidental internal commotion, might have thrown the whole into confusion, and produced the most fatal consequences." In this perilous situation he made the above-recited sacrifices to the ambition of the Mahrattas, and did all along so actively countenance and forward their proceedings, and with so full a sense of their effect, that in his minute of the 24th December, 1784, he has declared, "that in the countries which border on the dominions of the Nabob Vizier, or on that quarter of our own, in effect there is no other power." And he did further admit, that the presence of the Mahratta chief aforesaid, so near the borders of the Nabob's dominions, was no cause of suspicion; for "that it is the effect of his own solicitation, and is so far the effect of an act of that government."

XXI. That, in further pursuit of the same pernicious design, he, the said Warren Hastings, did enter into an agreement to withdraw a very great body of the British troops out of the Nabob's dominions,—asserting, however truly, yet in direct contradiction to his own declarations, that "this government" (meaning the British government) "has not any right to force defence with its maintenance upon him" (the Nabob); and he did thus not only avowedly aggrandize the Mahratta state, and weaken the defence upon the frontier, but did as avowedly detain their captain-general in force on that very frontier, notwithstanding he was well apprised that they had designs against those dependent territories of Oude, which they had with great difficulty been persuaded, even in appearance, to include in the treaty of peace,—and that they have never renounced their claims upon certain large and valuable portions of them, and have shown evident signs of their intentions, on the first opportunity, of asserting and enforcing them. And, finally, the said Warren Hastings, in contradiction to sundry declarations of his own concerning the necessity of curbing the power of the Mahrattas, and to the principle of sundry measures undertaken by himself professedly for that purpose, and to the sense of the House of Commons, expressed in their resolution of 28th May, 1782, against any measures that tended to unite the dangerous powers of the Mahratta empire under one active command, has endeavored to persuade the Company, that, "while Sindia lives, every accession of territory obtained by him will be an advantage to this [the British] government"; which if it was true as respecting the personal dispositions of Sindia, which there is no reason to believe, yet it was highly criminal to establish a power in the Mahrattas which must survive the man in confidence of whose personal dispositions a power more than personal was given, and which may hereafter fall into hands disposed to make a more hostile use of it.

XXII. That, in consequence of all the before-recited intrigues, the Mogul emperor being in the hands of the Mahrattas, he, the said Mogul, has been obliged to declare the head of the Mahratta state to be vicegerent of the Mogul empire, an authority which supersedes that of Vizier, and has thereby consolidated in the Mahratta state all the powers acknowledged to be of legal authority in India; in consequence of which, they have acquired, and have actually already attempted to use, the said claims of general superiority against the Company itself,—the Mahrattas claiming a right in themselves to a fourth part of the revenues of all the provinces in the Company's possession, and claiming, in right of the Mogul, the tribute due to him: by which actings and doings the said Hastings has to the best of his power brought the British provinces in India into a dependence on the Mahratta state: and in order to add to the aforesaid enormous claims a proportioned force, he did never cease, during his stay in India, to contrive the means for its increase; for it is of public notoriety, that one great object of the Mahratta policy is to unite under their dominion the nation or religious sect of the Seiks, who, being a people abounding with soldiers, and possessing large territories, would extend the Mahratta power over the whole of the vast countries to the northwest of India.

XXIII. That the said Warren Hastings, further to augment the power of the said Mahrattas, and to endanger the safety of the British possessions, having established in force the said Mahrattas on the frontier, as afore-recited, and finding the Council-General averse in that situation to the withdrawing the British forces therefrom, and for disbanding them to the extent required by the said Hastings, did, in a minute of the 4th December, 1784, after stating a supposition, that, contrary to his opinion, the said troops should not be reduced, propose to employ them under the command of the Mogul's son, then under the influence of the Mahrattas, in a war against the aforesaid people or religious sect called Seiks, defending the same on the following principles: "I feel the sense of an obligation, imposed on me by the supposition I have made, to state a mode of rendering the detachment of use in its prescribed station, and of affording the appearance of a cause for its retention."

XXIV. That the said Hastings did admit that there was no present danger to the Company's possessions from that nation which could justify him in such a war, as he had declared that the Mahrattas were the only power that bordered on the Company's possessions and those of the Vizier; but he did assign as a reason for going to war with them their military and enthusiastic spirit,—the hardiness of their natural constitution,—the dangers which might arise from them in some future time, if they should ever happen to be united under one head, they existing at present in a state little different from anarchy; and he did predict great danger from them, and at no very remote period, "if this people be permitted to grow into maturity without interruption." And though he doth pretend that the solicitations of the heir-apparent of the Mogul, who, he says, did repeatedly and earnestly solicit him to obtain the permission to use the Company's troops for the purpose aforesaid, had weight with him, yet he doth declare, as he expresses himself in the minute aforesaid, that "a stronger impulse, arising from the hope of blasting the growth of a generation whose strength might become fatal to our own, strongly pleaded in my mind for supporting his wishes."

XXV. That the said Warren Hastings, after forcibly recommending the plan aforesaid, did state strong objections, that did, "in his judgment, outweigh the advantages which might arise from a compliance with it." Yet the said Hastings, being determined to pursue his scheme for aggrandizing at any rate the Mahratta power, in whose adult growth and the recent effects of it he could see no danger, did pursue the design of war against a nation or sect of religion in its infancy, from whom he had received no injury, and in whose present state of government he did not apprehend any mischief whatsoever; and finding the Council fixed and determined on not disbanding the frontier regiments, and thinking that therein he had found an advantage, he did ground thereon the following proposition.

"If the expense [of the frontier troops] is to be continued, it may be surely better continued for some useful purpose than to keep up the parade of a great military corps designed merely to lie inactive in its quarters. On this ground, therefore, and on the supposition premised, I revert to my original sentiments in favor of the prince's plan; but as this will require some qualification in the execution of it, I will state my recommendation of it in the terms of a proposition, viz., that, if it shall be the resolution of the board to continue the detachment now under the command of Colonel Sir John Cumming at Furruckabad, and if the prince Mirza Jehander Shah shall apply, with the authority of the king, and the concurrence of Mahdajee Sindia, for the assistance of an English military force, to act in conjunction with him, to expel the Seiks from the territories of which they have lately possessed themselves in the neighborhood of Delhi, it may be granted, and such a portion of the said detachment allotted to that service as shall be hereafter judged adequate to it."

XXVI. That the said Warren Hastings did, in the said proposal, endeavor to circumvent and overreach the Council-General, by converting an apparent and literal compliance with their resolution into a real and substantial opposition to and disappointment thereof. For his first proposal was, to withdraw the Company's troops from the Vizier's country on the pretence of relieving him from the burden of that establishment, but in reality with a view of facilitating the Mahratta pretensions on that province, which would then be deprived of the means of defence. And when the Council rejected the said proposal on the express ground of danger to the province by withdrawing from the Mahrattas the restraint of our troops, the said Hastings, finding his first scheme in favor of the Mahrattas against the provinces dependent on the Company defeated by the refusal of the Council to concur in the said measure of withdrawing the troops, did then endeavor to obtain the same purpose in a different way; and instead of leaving the troops, according to the intention and policy of the Council, as a check to the ambition and progress of the Mahrattas, he proposed to employ them in the actual furtherance of those schemes of aggrandizement of which his colleagues were jealous, and which it was the object of their resolution to counteract.

XXVII. That, in the whole of the letters, negotiations, proposals, and projects of the said Warren Hastings relative to the Mogul, he did appear to pursue but one object, namely, the aggrandizement of the lately hostile and always dangerous power of the Mahrattas, and did pursue the same by means highly dishonorable to the British character for honor, justice, candor, plain-dealing, moderation, and humanity.