The Works of Edmund Burke Volume 8

Edmund Burke

• Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9783849651244
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría política

Burke was one of the greatest political thinkers whom England has produced, and all his writings, like his speeches, are characterised by the welding together of knowledge, thought, and feeling. Unlike most orators he is more successful as a writer than as a speaker. He rose too far above the heads of his audience, which the continued splendour of his declamation, his inordinate copiousness, and his excessive vehemence, often passing into fury, at length wearied, and even disgusted: but in his writings are found some of the grandest examples of a fervid and richly elaborated eloquence. Though he was never admitted to the Cabinet, he guided and influenced largely the policy of his party, while by his efforts in the direction of economy and order in administration at home, and on behalf of kindly and just government in India, as well as by his contributions to political philosophy, he laid his country and indeed the world under lasting obligations. This is volume eight out of twelve of his works, this volume containing the ninth and eleventh report on the affairs with India and the first part of the aticles of charge of high crimes against W. Hastings.

ARTICLES OF CHARGE OF HIGH CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS

ESQUIRE LATE GOVERNOR-GENERAL OF BENGAL: PRESENTED TO THE HOUSE OF COMMONS IN APRIL AND MAY, 1786.

ARTICLES I.-VI.

I.—ROHILLA WAR.

That the Court of Directors of the East India Company, from a just sense of the danger and odium incident to the extension of their conquests in the East Indies, and from an experience of the disorders and corrupt practices which intrigues and negotiations to bring about revolutions among the country powers had produced, did positively and repeatedly direct their servants in Bengal not to engage in any offensive war whatsoever. That the said Court laid it down as an invariable maxim, which ought ever to be maintained, that they were to avoid taking part in the political schemes of any of the country princes,—and did, in particular, order and direct that they should not engage with a certain prince called Sujah ul Dowlah, Nabob of Oude, and Vizier of the Empire, in any operations beyond certain limits in the said orders specially described.

That Warren Hastings, Esquire, then Governor of Fort William in Bengal, did, with other members of the Council, declare his clear understanding of the true intent and meaning of the said positive and repeated orders and injunctions,—did express to the Court of Directors his approbation of the policy thereof,—did declare that he adopted the same with sincerity and satisfaction, and that he was too well aware of the ruinous tendency of all schemes of conquest ever to adopt them, or ever to depart from the absolute line of self-defence, unless impelled to it by the most obvious necessity,—did signify to the Nabob of Oude the said orders, and his obligation to yield punctual obedience thereto,—and did solemnly engage and promise to the Court of Directors, with the unanimous concurrence of the whole Council, "that no object or consideration should either tempt or compel him to pass the political line which they [the Directors] had laid down for his operations with the Vizier," assuring the Court of Directors that he "scarce saw a possible advantage which could compensate the hazard and expense to be incurred by a contrary conduct,"—that he did frequently repeat the same declarations, or declarations to the same effect, particularly in a letter to the Nabob himself, of the 22d of November, 1773, in the following words: "The commands of my superiors are, as I have repeatedly informed you, peremptory, that I shall not suffer their arms to be carried beyond the line of their own boundaries, and those of your Excellency, their ally."

That the said Warren Hastings, in direct contradiction to the said orders, and to his own sense of their propriety and coercive authority, and in breach of his express promises and engagements, did, in September, 1773, enter into a private engagement with the said Nabob of Oude, who was the special object of the prohibition, to furnish him, for a stipulated sum of money to be paid to the East India Company, with a body of troops for the declared purpose of "thoroughly extirpating the nation of the Rohillas": a nation from whom the Company had never received, or pretended to receive or apprehend, any injury whatsoever; whose country, in the month of February, 1773, by an unanimous resolution of the said Warren Hastings and his Council, was included in the line of defence against the Mahrattas; and from whom the Nabob never complained of an aggression or act of hostility, nor pretended a distinct cause of quarrel, other than the non-payment of a sum of money in dispute between him and that people.

That, supposing the sum of money in question to have been strictly due to the said Nabob by virtue of any engagement between him and the Rohilla chiefs, the East India Company, or their representatives, were not parties to that engagement, or guaranties thereof, nor bound by any obligation whatever to enforce the execution of it.

That, previous to the said Warren Hastings's entering into the agreement or bargain aforesaid to extirpate the said nation, he did not make, or cause to be made, a due inquiry into the validity of the sole pretext used by the said Nabob; nor did he give notice of the said claims of debt to the nation of the Rohillas, in order to receive an explanation on their part of the matter in litigation; nor did he offer any mediation, nor propose, nor afford an opportunity of proposing, an agreement or submission by which the calamities of war might be avoided, as, by the high state in which the East India Company stood as a sovereign power in the East, and the honor and character it ought to maintain, as well as by the principles of equity and humanity, and by the true and obvious policy of uniting the power of the Mahometan princes against the Mahrattas, he was bound to do. That, instead of such previous inquiry, or tender of good offices, the said Warren Hastings did stimulate the ambition and ferocity of the Nabob of Oude to the full completion of the inhuman end of the said unjustifiable enterprise, by informing him "that it would be absolutely necessary to persevere in it until it should be accomplished"; pretending that a fear of the Company's displeasure was his motive for annexing the accomplishment of the enterprise as a condition of his assistance, and asserting "that he could not hazard or answer for the displeasure of the Company, his masters, if they should find themselves involved in a fruitless war, or in an expense for prosecuting it,"—a pretence tending to the high dishonor of the East India Company, as if the gain to be acquired was to reconcile that body to the breach of their own orders prohibiting all such enterprises;—and in order further to involve the said Nabob beyond the power of retreating, he did, in the course of the proceeding, purposely put the said Nabob under difficulties in case he should decline that war, and did oblige him to accept even the permission to relinquish the execution of this unjust project as a favor, and to make concessions for it; thereby acting as if the Company were principals in the hostility; and employing for this purpose much double dealing and divers unworthy artifices to entangle and perplex the said Nabob, but by means of which he found himself (as he has entered it on record) hampered and embarrassed in a particular manner.

That the said compact for offensive alliance in favor of a great prince against a considerable nation was not carried on by projects and counter-projects in writing; nor were the articles and conditions thereof formed into any regular written instrument, signed and sealed by the parties; but the whole (both the negotiation and the compact of offensive alliance against the Rohillas) was a mere verbal engagement, the purport and conventions whereof nowhere appeared, except in subsequent correspondence, in which certain of the articles, as they were stated by the several parties, did materially differ: a proceeding new and unprecedented, and directly leading to mutual misconstruction, evasion, and ill faith, and tending to encourage and protect every species of corrupt, clandestine practice. That, at the time when this private verbal agreement was made by the said Warren Hastings with the Nabob of Oude, a public ostensible treaty was concluded by him with the said Nabob, in which there is no mention whatever of such agreement, or reference whatever to it: in defence of which omission, it is asserted by the said Warren Hastings, that the multiplication of treaties weakens their efficacy, and therefore they should be reserved only for very important and permanent obligations; notwithstanding he had previously declared to the said Nabob, "that the points which he had proposed required much consideration, and the previous ratification of a formal agreement, before he could consent to them." That the whole of the said verbal agreement with the Nabob of Oude in his own person, without any assistance on his part, was carried on and concluded by the said Warren Hastings alone, without any person who might witness the same, without the intervention even of an interpreter, though he confesses that he spoke the Hindostan language imperfectly, and although he had with him at that time and place several persons high in the Company's service and confidence, namely, the commander-in-chief of their forces, two members of their Council, and the Secretary to the Council, who were not otherwise acquainted with the proceedings between him and the said Nabob than by such communications as he thought fit to make to them.

That the object avowed by the said Warren Hastings, and the motives urged by him for employing the British arms in the utter extirpation of the Rohilla nation, are stated by himself in the following terms:—"The acquisition of forty lacs of rupees to the Company, and of so much specie added to the exhausted currency of our provinces;—that it would give wealth to the Nabob of Oude, of which we should participate;—that the said Warren Hastings should always be ready to profess that he did reckon the probable acquisition of wealth among his reasons for taking up arms against his neighbors;—that it would ease the Company of a considerable part of their military expense, and preserve their troops from inaction and relaxation of discipline;—that the weak state of the Rohillas promised an easy conquest of them;—and, finally, that such was his idea of the Company's distress at home, added to his knowledge of their wants abroad, that he should have been glad of any occasion to employ their forces which saved so much of their pay and expenses."

That, in the private verbal agreement aforesaid for offensive war, the said Warren Hastings did transgress the bounds of the authority given him by his instructions from the Council of Fort William, which had limited his powers to such compacts "as were consistent with the spirit of the Company's orders"; which Council he afterwards persuaded, and with difficulty drew into an acquiescence in what he had done.

That the agreement to the effect aforesaid was settled in the said secret conferences before the 10th of September, 1773; but the said Warren Hastings, concealing from the Court of Directors a matter of which it was his duty to afford them the earliest and fullest information, did, on the said 10th of September, 1773, write to the Directors, and dispatched his letter over land, giving them an account of the public treaty, but taking not the least notice of his agreement for a mercenary war against the nation of the Rohillas.

That, in order to conceal the true purport of the said clandestine agreement the more effectually, and until he should find means of gaining over the rest of the Council to a concurrence in his disobedience of orders, he entered a minute in the Council books, giving a false account of the transaction; in which minute he represented that the Nabob had indeed proposed the design aforesaid, and that he, the said Warren Hastings, was pleased that he urged the scheme of this expedition no further, when in reality and truth he had absolutely consented to the said enterprise, and had engaged to assist him in it, which he afterwards admitted, and confessed that he did act in consequence of the same.

That the said Warren Hastings and his Council were sensible of the true nature of the enterprise in which they had engaged the Company's arms, and of the heavy responsibility to which it would subject himself and the Council,—"the personal hazard they, the Council, run, in undertaking so uncommon a measure without positive instructions, at their own risk, with the eyes of the whole nation on the affairs of the Company, and the passions and prejudices of almost every man in England inflamed against the conduct of the Company and the character of its servants"; yet they engaged in the very practice which had brought such odium on the Company, and on the character of its servants, though they further say that they had continually before their eyes the dread of forfeiting the favor of their employers, and becoming the "objects of popular invectives." The said Warren Hastings himself says, at the very time when he proposed the measure, "I must confess I entertain some doubts as to its expediency at this time, from the circumstances of the Company at home, exposed to popular clamor, and all its measures liable to be canvassed in Parliament, their charter drawing to a close, and his Majesty's ministers unquestionably ready to take advantage of every unfavorable circumstance in the negotiations of its renewal." All these considerations did not prevent the said Warren Hastings from making and carrying into execution the said mercenary agreement for a sum of money, the payment of which the Nabob endeavored to evade on a construction of the verbal treaty, and was so far from being insisted on, as it ought to have been, by the said Warren Hastings, that, when, after the completion of the service, the commander-in-chief was directed to make a demand of the money, the agent of the said Warren Hastings at the same time assured the Nabob "that the demand was nothing more than matter of form, common, and even necessary, in all public transactions, and that, although the board considered the claim of the government literally due, it was not the intention of administration to prescribe to his Excellency the mode, or even limits, of payment." Nor was any part of the money recovered, until the establishment of the Governor-General and Council by act of Parliament, and their determination to withdraw the brigade from the Nabob's service,—the Resident at his court, appointed by the said Warren Hastings, having written, that he had experienced much duplicity and deceit in most of his transactions with his Excellency; and the said Nabob and his successors falling back in other payments in the same or greater proportion as he advanced in the payment of this debt, the consideration of lucre to the Company, the declared motive to this shameful transaction, totally failed, and no money in effect and substance (as far as by any account to be depended on appears) has been obtained.

That the said Nabob of Oude did, in consequence of the said agreement, and with the assistance of British troops, which were ordered to march and subjected to his disposal by the said Warren Hastings and the Council, unjustly enter into and invade the country of the Rohillas, and did there make war in a barbarous and inhuman manner, "by an abuse of victory," "by the unnecessary destruction of the country," "by a wanton display of violence and oppression, of inhumanity and cruelty," and "by the sudden expulsion and casting down of an whole race of people, to whom the slightest benevolence was denied." When prayer was made not to dishonor the Begum (a princess of great rank, whose husband had been killed in battle) and other women, by dragging them about the country, to be loaded with the scoffs of the Nabob's rabble, and otherwise still worse used, the Nabob refused to listen to the entreaties of a British commander-in-chief in their favor; and the said women of high rank were exposed not only to the vilest personal indignities, but even to absolute want: and these transactions being by Colonel Champion communicated to the said Warren Hastings, instead of commendations for his intelligence, and orders to redress the said evils, and to prevent the like in future, by means which were suggested, and which appear to have been proper and feasible, he received a reprimand from the said Warren Hastings, who declared that we had no authority to control the conduct of the Vizier in the treatment of his subjects; and that Colonel Champion desisted from making further representations on this subject to the said Warren Hastings, being apprehensive of having already run some risk of displeasing by perhaps a too free communication of sentiments. That, in consequence of the said proceedings, not only the eminent families of the chiefs of the Rohilla nation were either cut off or banished, and their wives and offspring reduced to utter ruin, but the country itself, heretofore distinguished above all others for the extent of its cultivation as a garden, not h...