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

XIX.—LIBEL ON THE COURT OF DIRECTORS

I. That Warren Hastings, Esquire, was, during the whole of the year 1783, a servant of the East India Company, and was bound by the duties of that relation not only to yield obedience to the orders of the Court of Directors, but to give to the whole of their service an example of submission, reverence, and respect to their authority; and that, if they should in the course of their duty call in question any part of his conduct, he was bound to conduct his defence with temper and decency; and while his conduct was under their consideration, it was not allowable to print and publish any of his letters to them without their consent first had and obtained; and he was bound by the same principles of duty, enforced by still more cogent reasons, to observe, in a paper intended for publication, great modesty and moderation, and to treat the said Court of Directors, his lawful masters, with respect.

II. That the said Warren Hastings did print and publish, or cause to be printed and published, at Calcutta in Bengal, the narrative of his transactions at Benares, in a letter written at that place, without leave had of the Court of Directors, in order to preoccupy the judgment of the servants in that settlement, and to gain from them a factious countenance and support, previous to the judgment and opinion of the Court of Directors, his lawful superiors.

III. That the Court of Directors, having come to certain resolutions of fact relative to the engagements subsisting between them and the Rajah of Benares, and the manner in which the same had been fulfilled on the part of the Rajah, did, in the fifth resolution, which was partly a resolution of opinion, declare as follows: "That it appears to this Court that the conduct of the Governor-General towards the Rajah, whilst he was at Benares, was improper; and that the imprisonment of his person, thereby disgracing him in the eyes of his subjects and others, was unwarrantable and highly impolitic, and may tend to weaken the confidence which the native princes of India ought to have in the justice and moderation of the Company's government."

IV. That the said resolutions being transmitted to the said Warren Hastings, he, the said Warren Hastings, did write, and cause to be printed and published, a certain false, insolent, malicious, and seditious libel, purporting to be a letter from him, the said Warren Hastings, to the Court of Directors, dated Fort William, 20th March, 1783, "calculated," as the Directors truly affirm, "to bring contempt, as well as an odium, on the Court of Directors, for their conduct on that occasion"; and the said libel had a direct tendency to excite a spirit of disobedience to the lawful government of this nation in India through all ranks of their service.

V. That he, the said Warren Hastings, among other insolent and contumacious charges and aspersions on the Court of Directors, did address them in the printed letter aforesaid as follows. "I deny that Rajah Cheyt Sing was a native prince of India. Cheyt Sing is the son of a collector of the revenue of that province, which his arts, and the misfortunes of his master, enabled him to convert to a permanent and hereditary possession. This man, whom you have thus ranked among the princes of India, will be astonished, when he hears it, at an elevation so unlooked for, nor less at the independent rights which your commands have assigned him,—rights which are so foreign to his conceptions, that I doubt whether he will know in what language to assert them, unless the example which you have thought it consistent with justice, however opposite to policy, to show, of becoming his advocates against your own interests, should inspire any of your own servants to be his advisers and instructors." And he did further, to bring into contempt the authority of the Company, and to excite a resistance to their lawful orders, frame a supposition that the Court of Directors had intended the restoration of the Rajah of Benares, and on that ground did presume in the said libel to calumniate, in disrespectful and contumelious terms, the policy of the Court of Directors, as well as the person whom he did conceive to be the object of their protection, as followeth. "Of the consequences of such a policy I forbear to speak. Most happily, the wretch whose hopes may be excited by the appearances in his favor is ill qualified to avail himself of them, and the force which is stationed in the province of Benares is sufficient to suppress any symptoms of internal sedition; but it cannot fail to create distrust and suspense in the minds both of the rulers and of the people, and such a state is always productive of disorder. But it is not in this partial consideration that I dread the effects of your commands; it is in your proclaimed indisposition against the first executive member of your first government in India. I almost shudder at the reflection of what might have happened, had these denunciations against your own minister, in favor of a man universally considered in this part of the world as justly attainted for his crimes, the murderer of your servants and soldiers, and the rebel to your authority, arrived two months earlier."

VI. That the said Warren Hastings did also presume to censure and asperse the Court of Directors for the moderate terms in which they had expressed their displeasure against him, as putting him under the necessity of stating in his defence a strong accusation against himself, and as implying in the said Court a consciousness that he was not guilty of the offences charged upon him,—being, as he asserts, in the resolutions of the Court of Directors, "arraigned and prejudged of a violation of national faith, in acts of such complicated aggravation, that, if they were true, no punishment SHORT OF DEATH could atone for the injury which the interest and credit of the public had sustained in them"; and he did therefore censure the said Court for applying no stronger or more criminating epithets than those of "improper, unwarrantable, and highly impolitic," to an offence so by them charged, and by him described. And though it be true that the expressions aforesaid are much too reserved for the purpose of duly characterizing the offences of the said Hastings, yet was it in him most indecent to libel the Court of Directors for the same; and his implication, from the tenderness of the epithets and descriptions aforesaid used towards him, was not only indecent, but ungrounded, malicious, and scandalous,—he having himself highly, though truly, aggravated "the charge of the injuries done by him to the Rajah of Benares," in order to bring the said Directors into contempt and suspicion, the paragraphs in the said libel being as follow.—"Here I must crave leave to say, that the terms 'improper, unwarrantable, and highly impolitic' are much too gentle, as deductions from such premises; and as every reader of the latter will obviously feel, as he reads, the deductions which inevitably belong to them, I will add, that the strict performance of solemn engagements on one part, followed by acts directly subversive of them and by total dispossession on the other, stamps on the perpetrators of the latter the guilt of the greatest possible violation of faith and justice."—"There is an appearance of tenderness in this deviation from plain construction, of which, however meant, I have a right to complain; because it imposes on me the necessity of framing the terms of the accusation against myself, which you have only not made, but have stated the leading arguments to it so strongly, that no one who reads these can avoid making it, or not know it to have been intended."

VII. That the said Hastings, being well aware that his own declarations did contain the clearest condemnation of his own conduct from his own pen, did in the said libel attempt to overturn, frustrate, and render of none effect all the proofs to be given of prevarication, contradiction, and of opposition of action to principle, which can be used against men in public trust, and did contend that the same could not be used against him; and as if false assertions could be justified by factious motives, he did endeavor to do away the authority of his own deliberate, recorded declarations, entered by him in writing on the Council-Books of the Presidency; for, after asserting, but not attempting to prove, that his declarations were consistent with his conduct, he writes in the said libel as follows: For "were it otherwise, they were not to be made the rules of my conduct; and God forbid that every expression dictated by the impulse of present emergency, and unpremeditatedly uttered in the heat of party contention, should impose upon me the obligation of a fixed principle, and be applied to every variable occasion!"

VIII. That the said Hastings, in order to draw the lawful dependence of the servants of the Company from the Court of Directors to a factious dependence on himself, did, in the libel aforesaid, treat the acts and appointments of their undoubted authority, when exercised in opposition to his arbitrary will, as ruinous to their affairs, in the following terms. "It is as well known to the Indian world as to the Court of English Proprietors, that the first declaratory instruments of the dissolution of my influence, in the year 1774, were Mr. John Bristow and Mr. Francis Fowke. By your ancient and known constitution the Governor has been ever held forth and understood to possess the ostensible powers of government; all the correspondence with foreign princes is conducted in his name; and every person resident with them for the management of your political concerns is understood to be more especially his representative, and of his choice: and such ought to be the rule; for how otherwise can they trust an agent nominated against the will of his principal? When the state of this administration was such as seemed to admit of the appointment of Mr. Bristow to the Residency of Lucknow without much diminution of my own influence, I gladly seized the occasion to show my readiness to submit to your commands; I proposed his nomination; he was nominated, and declared to be the agent of my own choice. Even this effect of my caution is defeated by your absolute command for his reappointment independent of me, and with the supposition that I should be adverse to it.—I am now wholly deprived of my official powers, both in the province of Oude, and in the zemindary of Benares."

IX. That, further to emancipate others and himself from due obedience to the Court of Directors, he did, in the libel aforesaid, enhance his services, which, without specification or proof, he did suppose in the said libel to be important and valuable, by representing them as done under their displeasure, and doth attribute his not having done more to their opposition, as followeth. "It is now a complete period of eleven years since I first received the first nominal charge of your affairs; in the course of it I have invariably had to contend, not with ordinary difficulties, but such as most unnaturally arose from the opposition of those very powers from which I primarily derived my authority, and which were required for the support of it. My exertions, though applied to an unvaried and consistent line of action, have been occasional and desultory; yet I please myself with the hope, that, in the annals of your dominion, which shall be written after the extinction of recent prejudices, this term of its administration will appear not the least conducive to the interests of the Company, nor the least reflective of the honor of the British name: and allow me to suggest the instructive reflection of what good might have been done, and what evil prevented, had due support been given to that administration which has performed such eminent and substantial services without it."

And the said Hastings, further to render the authority of the said Court perfectly contemptible, doth, in a strain of exultation for his having escaped out of a measure in which by his guilt he had involved the Company in a ruinous war, and out of which it had escaped by a sacrifice of almost all the territories before acquired (from that enemy which he had made) either by war or former treaties, and by the abandoning the Company's allies to their mercy, attribute the said supposed services to his acting in such a manner as had on former occasions excited their displeasure, in the following words. "Pardon, Honorable Sirs, this digressive exultation. I cannot suppress the pride which I feel in this successful achievement of a measure so fortunate for your interests and the national honor; for that pride is the source of my zeal, so frequently exerted in your support, and never more happily than in those instances in which I have departed from the prescribed and beaten path of action, and assumed a responsibility which has too frequently drawn on me the most pointed effects of your displeasure. But however I may yield to my private feelings in thus enlarging on the subject, my motive in introducing it was immediately connected with its context, and was to contrast the actual state of your political affairs, derived from a happier influence, with that which might have attended an earlier dissolution of it": and he did value himself upon "the patience and temper with which he had submitted to all the indignities which have been heaped upon him" (meaning, by the said Court of Directors) "in this long service"; and he did insolently attribute to an unusual strain of zeal for their service, that he "persevered in the VIOLENT MAINTENANCE OF HIS OFFICE."

X. That, in order further to excite the spirit of disobedience in the Company's servants to the lawful authority set over them, he, the said Warren Hastings, did treat contemptuously and ironically the supposed disposition of the Company's servants to obey the orders of the Court of Directors, in the words following. "The recall of Mr. Markham, who was known to be the public agent of my own nomination at Benares, and the reappointment of Mr. Francis Fowke by your order, contained in the same letter, would place it [the restoration of Cheyt Sing] beyond a doubt. This order has been obeyed; and whenever you shall be pleased to order the restoration of Cheyt Sing, I will venture to promise the same ready and exact submission in the other members of the Council." And he did, in the postscript of the said letter, and as on recollection, endeavor to make a reparation of honor to his said colleagues, as if his expressions aforesaid had arisen from animosity to them, as follows. "Upon a careful revisal of what I have written, I fear that an expression which I have used, respecting the probable conduct of the board in the event of orders being received for the restoration of Cheyt Sing, may be construed as intimating a sense of dissatisfaction applied to transactions already past.—It is not my intention to complain of any one."

XI. That the said Hastings, in the acts of injury aforesaid to the Rajah of Benares, did assume and arrogate to himself an illegal authority therein, and did maintain that the acts done in consequence of that measure were not revocable by any subsequent authority, in the following words. "If you should proceed to order the restoration of Cheyt Sing to the zemindary, from which, by the powers which I legally possessed, and conceive myself legally bound to assert against any subsequent authority to the contrary derived from the same common source, he was dispossessed for crimes of the greatest enormity, and your Council shall resolve to execute the order, I will instantly give up my station and the service."

XII. That the said Warren Hastings did attempt to justify his publication of the said libellous letter to and against the Court of Directors by asserting therein that these resolutions (meaning the resolutions of the Court of Directors relative to the Rajah of Benares) "were either published or intended for publication": evidently proving that he did take this unwarrantable course without any sufficient assurance that the ground and motive by him assigned had any existence.

XX.—MAHRATTA WAR AND PEACE

I. That by an act passed in 1773 it was expressly ordered and provided, "that it should not be lawful for any President and Council of Madras, Bombay, or Bencoolen, for the time being, to make any orders for commencing hostilities, or declaring or making war, against any Indian princes or powers, or for negotiating or concluding any treaty of peace, or other treaty, with any such Indian princes or powers, without the consent and approbation of the Governor-General and Council first had and obtained, except in such cases of imminent necessity as would render it dangerous to postpone such hostilities or treaties until the orders from the Governor-General and Council might arrive." That, nevertheless, the President and Council of Bombay did, in December, 1774, without the consent and approbation of the Governor-General and Council of Fort William, and in the midst of profound peace, commence an unjust and unprovoked war against the Mahratta government, did conclude a treaty with a certain person, a fugitive from that government, and proscribed by it, named Ragonaut Row, or Ragoba, and did, under various base and treacherous pretences, invade and conquer the island of Salsette, belonging to the Mahratta government.

II. That Warren Hastings, on the first advices received in Bengal of the above transactions, did condemn the same in the strongest terms,—declaring that "the measures adopted by the Presidency of Bombay had a tendency to a very extensive and indefinite scene of troubles, and that their conduct was unseasonable, impolitic, unjust, and unauthorized." And the Governor-General and Council, in order to put a stop to the said unjust hostilities, did appoint an ambassador to the Peshwa, or chief of the Mahratta state, resident at Poonah; and the said ambassador did, after a long negotiation, conclude a definitive treaty of peace with the said Peshwa on terms highly honorable and beneficial to the East India Company, who by the said treaty obtained from the Mahrattas a cession of considerable tracts of country, the Mahratta share of the city of Baroach, twelve lacs of rupees for the expenses of the said unjust war, and particularly the island of Salsette, of which the Presidency of Bombay had possessed themselves by surprise and treachery. That, in return for these extraordinary concessions, the articles principally insisted on by the Mahrattas, with a view to their own future tranquillity and internal quiet, were, that no assistance should he given to any subject or servant of the Peshwa that should cause disturbances or rebellion in the Mahratta dominions, and particularly that the English should not assist Ragonaut Row, to whom the Mahrattas agreed to allow five lacs of rupees a year, or a jaghire to that amount, and that he should reside at Benares. That, nevertheless, the Presidency of Bombay did receive and keep Ragonaut Row at Bombay, did furnish him with a considerable establishment, and continue to carry on secret intrigues and negotiations with him, thereby giving just ground of jealousy and distrust to the Mahratta state. That the late Colonel John Upton, by whom the treaty of Poorunder was negotiated and concluded, did declare to the Governor-General and Council, "that, while Ragonaut Row resides at Bombay in expectation of being supported, the ministers can place no confidence in the Council there, which must now be productive of the greatest inconveniencies, and perhaps in the end of fatal consequences." That the said Warren Hastings, concurring with his Council, which then consisted of Sir John Clavering, Richard Barwell, and Philip Francis, Esquires, did, on the 18th of August, 1777, declare to the Presidency of Bombay, that "he could see no reason to doubt that the presence of Ragoba at Bombay would continue to be an insuperable bar to the completion of the treaty concluded with the Mahratta government; nor could any sincere cordiality and good understanding be established with them, as long as he should appear to derive encouragement and support from the English." That Sir John Clavering died soon after, and that the late Edward Wheler, Esquire, succeeded to a seat in the Supreme Council. That on the 29th of January, 1778, the Governor-General and Council received a letter from the Presidency of Bombay, dated 12th December, 1777, in which they declared, "that they had agreed to give encouragement to a party formed in Ragoba's favor, and flattered themselves they should meet with the hearty concurrence of the Governor-General and Council in the measures they might be obliged to pursue in consequence." That the party so described was said to consist of four principal persons in the Mahratta state, on whose part some overtures had been made to Mr. William Lewis, the Resident of Bombay at Poonah, for the assistance of the Company to bring Ragoba to Poonah. That the said Warren Hastings, immediately on the receipt of the preceding advices, did propose and carry it in Council, by means of his casting voice, and against the remonstrances, arguments, and solemn protest of two members of the Supreme Council, that the sanction of that government should be given to the plan which the President and Council of Bombay had agreed to form with the Mahratta government; and also that a supply of money (to the amount of ten lacs of rupees) should be immediately granted to the President and Council of Bombay for the support of their engagements above mentioned; and also that a military force should be sent to the Presidency of Bombay. That in defence of these resolutions the said Warren Hastings did falsely pretend and affirm, "that the resolution of the Presidency of Bombay was formed on such a case of imminent necessity as would have rendered it dangerous to postpone the execution of it until the orders from the Governor-General and Council might arrive; and that the said Presidency of Bombay were warranted by the treaty of Poorunder to join in a plan for conducting Ragonaut Row to Poonah on the application of the ruling part of the Mahratta state": whereas the main object of the said treaty on the part of the Mahrattas, and to obtain which they made many important concessions to the India Company, was, that the English should withdraw their forces, and give no assistance to Ragoba, and that he should be excluded forever from any share in their government, being a person universally held in abhorrence in the Mahratta empire; and if it had been true (instead of being, as it was, notoriously false) that the ruling part of the administration of the Mahratta state solicited the return of Ragonaut Row to Poonah, his return in that case might have been effected by acts of their own, without the interposition of the English power, and without our interference in their affairs. That it was the special duty of the said Warren Hastings, derived from a special trust reposed in him and power committed to him by Parliament, to have restrained, as by law he had authority to do, the subordinate Presidency of Bombay from entering into hostilities with the Mahrattas, or from making engagements the manifest tendency of which was to enter into those hostilities, and to have put a stop to them, if any such had been begun; that he was bound by the duty of his office to preserve the faith of the British government, pledged in the treaty of Poorunder, inviolate and sacred, as well as by the special orders and instructions of the East India Company to fix his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India: all which important duties the said Warren Hastings did wilfully violate, in giving the sanction of the Governor-General and Council to the dangerous, faithless, and ill-concerted projects of the President and Council of Bombay hereinbefore mentioned, from which the subsequent Mahratta war, with all the expense, distress, and disgraces which have attended it, took their commencement; and that the said Warren Hastings, therefore, is specially and principally answerable for the said war, and for all the consequences thereof. That in a letter dated the 20th of January, 1778, the President and Council of Bombay informed the Governor-General and Council, that, in consequence of later intelligence received from Poonah, they had immediately resolved that nothing further could be done, unless Saccaram Baboo, the principal in the late treaty (of Poorunder) joined in making a formal application to them. That no such application was ever made by that person. That the said Warren Hastings, finding that all this pretended ground for engaging in an invasion of the Mahratta government had totally failed, did then pretend to give credit to, and to be greatly alarmed by, the suggestions of the President and Council of Bombay, that the Mahrattas were negotiating with the French, and had agreed to give them the port of Choul, on the Malabar coast, and did affirm that the French had obtained possession of that port. That all these suggestions and assertions were false, and, if they had been true, would have furnished no just occasion for attacking either the Mahrattas or the French, with both of whom the British nation was then at peace. That the said Warren Hastings did then propose and carry the following resolution in Council, against the protest of two members thereof, that, "for the purpose of granting you [the Presidency of Bombay] the most effectual support in our power, we have resolved to assemble a strong military force near Calpee, the commanding officer of which is to be ordered to march by the most practicable route to Bombay, or to such other place as future occurrences and your directions to him may render it expedient"; and with respect to the steps said to be taking by the French to obtain a settlement on the Malabar coast, the said Warren Hastings did declare to the Presidency of Bombay, "that it was the opinion of the Governor-General and Council that no time ought to be lost in forming and carrying into execution such measures as might most effectually tend to frustrate such dangerous designs." That the said Warren Hastings, therefore, instead of fixing his attention to the preservation of peace throughout India, as it was his duty to have done, did continue to abet, encourage, and support the dangerous projects of the Presidency of Bombay, and did thereby manifest a determined intention to disturb the peace of India, by the unfortunate success of which intention, and by the continued efforts of the said Hastings, the greatest part of India has been for several years involved in a bloody and calamitous war. That both the Court of Directors and Court of Proprietors did specially instruct the said Warren Hastings, in all his measures, "to make the safety and prosperity of Bengal his principal object," and did heavily censure the said Warren Hastings for having employed their troops at a great distance from Bengal in a war against the Rohillas, which the House of Commons have pronounced to be iniquitous,¹⁷ and did on that occasion expressly declare, "that they disapproved of all such distant expeditions as might eventually carry their forces to any situation too remote to admit of their speedy and safe return to the protection of their own provinces, in case of emergency."¹⁸ That the said Warren Hastings nevertheless ordered a detachment from the Bengal army to cross the Jumna, and to proceed across the peninsula by a circuitous route through the diamond country of Bundelcund, and through the dominions of the Rajah of Berar, situated in the centre of Hindostan, and did thereby strip the provinces subject to the government of Fort William of a considerable part of their established defence, and did thereby disobey the general instructions and positive orders of the Court of Directors, (given upon occasion of a crime of the same nature committed by the said Hastings,) and was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.

That the said Warren Hastings, having taken the measures hereinbefore described for supporting those of the Presidency of Bombay, did, on the 23d of March, 1778, "invest the said Presidency with authority to form a new alliance with Ragoba, and to engage with him in any scheme which they should deem expedient and safe for retrieving his affairs." That the said Hastings was then in possession of a letter from the Court of Directors, dated the 4th of July, 1777, containing a positive order to the Presidency of Bombay in the following words. "Though that treaty" (meaning the treaty of Poorunder) "is not, upon the whole, so agreeable to us as we could wish, still we are resolved strictly to adhere to it on our parts. You must therefore be particularly vigilant, while Ragoba is with you, to prevent him from forming any plan against what is called the ministerial party at Poonah; and we hereby positively order you not to engage with him in any scheme whatever in retrieving his affairs, without the consent of the Governor-General and Council, or the Court of Directors." That the said Ragoba neither did or could form any plan for his restoration but what was and must be against the ministerial party at Poonah, who held and exercised the regency of that state in the infancy of the Peshwa; and that, supposing him to have formed any other scheme, in conjunction with Bombay, for retrieving his affairs, the said Hastings, in giving a previous general authority to the Presidency of Bombay to engage with Ragoba in any scheme for that purpose, without knowing what such scheme might be, and thereby relinquishing and transferring to the discretion of a subordinate government that superintendence and control over all measures tending to create or provoke a war which the law had exclusively vested in the Governor-General and Council, was guilty of a high crime and misdemeanor.