The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12). Edmund Burke

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СКАЧАТЬ of his own, and bearing legal interest. This was his method of endeavoring to conceal some at least of his bribes: for I would not suggest, nor have your Lordships to think, that I believe that these were his only bribes,—for there is reason to think there was an infinite number besides; but it did so happen that they were those bribes which he thought might be discovered, some of which he knew were discovered, and all of which he knew might become the subject of a Parliamentary inquiry.

      Mr. Hastings said he might have concealed them forever. Every one knows the facility of concealing corrupt transactions everywhere, in India particularly. But this is by himself proved not to be universally true, at least not to be true in his own opinion; for he tells you, in his letter from Cheltenham, that he would have concealed the Nabob's 100,000l., but that the magnitude rendered it easy of discovery. He, therefore, avows an intention of concealment.

      But it happens here, very singularly, that this sum, which his fears of discovery by others obliged him to discover himself, happens to be one of those of which no trace whatsoever appears, except merely from the operation of his own apprehensions. There is no collateral testimony: Middleton knew nothing of it; Anderson knew nothing of it; it was not directly communicated to the faithful Larkins or the trusty Croftes;—which proves, indeed, the facility of concealment. The fact is, you find the application always upon the discovery. But concealment or discovery is a thing of accident.

      The bribes which I have hitherto brought before your Lordships belong to the first period of his bribery, before he thought of the doctrine on which he has since defended it. There are many other bribes which we charge him with having received during this first period, before an improving conversation and close virtuous connection with great lawyers had taught him how to practise bribes in such a manner as to defy detection, and instead of punishment to plead merit. I am not bound to find order and consistency in guilt: it is the reign of disorder. The order of the proceeding, as far as I am able to trace such a scene of prevarication, direct fraud, falsehood, and falsification of the public accounts, was this. From bribes he knew he could never abstain; and his then precarious situation made him the more rapacious. He knew that a few of his former bribes had been discovered, declared, recorded,—that for the moment, indeed, he was secure, because all informers had been punished and all concealers rewarded. He expected hourly a total change in the Council, and that men like Clavering and Monson might be again joined to Francis, that some great avenger should arise from their ashes,—"Exoriare, aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor,"—and that a more severe investigation and an infinitely more full display would be made of his robbery than hitherto had been done. He therefore began, in the agony of his guilt, to cast about for some device by which he might continue his offence, if possible, with impunity,—and possibly make a merit of it. He therefore first carefully perused the act of Parliament forbidding bribery, and his old covenant engaging him not to receive presents. And here he was more successful than upon former occasions. If ever an act was studiously and carefully framed to prevent bribery, it is that law of the 13th of the King, which he well observes admits no latitudes of construction, no subterfuge, no escape, no evasion. Yet has he found a defence of his crimes even in the very provisions which were made for their prevention and their punishment. Besides the penalty which belongs to every informer, the East India Company was invested with a fiction of property in all such bribes, in order to drag them with more facility out of the corrupt hands which held them. The covenant, with an exception of one hundred pounds, and the act of Parliament, without any exception, declared that the Governor-General and Council should receive no presents for their own use. He therefore concluded that the system of bribery and extortion might be clandestinely and safely carried on, provided the party taking the bribes had an inward intention and mental reservation that they should be privately applied to the Company's service in any way the briber should think fit, and that on many occasions this would prove the best method of supply for the exigencies of their service.

      He accordingly formed, or pretended to form, a private bribe exchequer, collateral with and independent of the Company's public exchequer, though in some cases administered by those whom for his purposes he had placed in the regular official department. It is no wonder that he has taken to himself an extraordinary degree of merit. For surely such an invention of finance, I believe, never was heard of,—an exchequer wherein extortion was the assessor, fraud the cashier, confusion the accountant, concealment the reporter, and oblivion the remembrancer: in short, such as I believe no man, but one driven by guilt into frenzy, could ever have dreamed of.

      He treats the official and regular Directors with just contempt, as a parcel of mean, mechanical book-keepers. He is an eccentric book-keeper, a Pindaric accountant. I have heard of "the poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling." Here was a revenue exacted from whom he pleased, at what times he pleased, in what proportions he pleased, through what persons he pleased, by what means he pleased, to be accounted for or not, at his discretion, and to be applied to what service he thought proper. I do believe your Lordships stand astonished at this scheme; and indeed I should be very loath to venture to state such a scheme at all, however I might have credited it myself, to any sober ears, if, in his defence before the House of Commons, and before the Lords, he had not directly admitted the fact of taking the bribes or forbidden presents, and had not in those defences, and much more fully in his correspondence with the Directors, admitted the fact, and justified it upon these very principles.

      As this is a thing so unheard-of and unexampled in the world, I shall first endeavor to account as well as I can for his motives to it, which your Lordships will receive or reject, just as you shall find them tally with the evidence before you: I say, his motives to it; because I contend that public valid reasons for it he could have none; and the idea of making the corruption of the Governor-General a resource to the Company never did or could for a moment enter into his thoughts. I shall then take notice of the juridical constructions upon which he justifies his acting in this extraordinary manner; and lastly, show you the concealments, prevarications, and falsehoods with which he endeavors to cover it. Because wherever you find a concealment you make a discovery. Accounts of money received and paid ought to be regular and official.

      He wrote over to the Court of Directors, that there were certain sums of money he had received and which were not his own, but that he had received them for their use. By this time his intercourse with gentlemen of the law became more considerable than it had been before. When first attacked for presents, he never denied the receipt of them, or pretended to say they were for public purposes; but upon looking more into the covenants, and probably with better legal advice, he found that no money could be legally received for his own use; but as these bribes were directly given and received as for his own use, yet (says he) "there was an inward destination of them in my own mind to your benefit, and to your benefit have I applied them."

      Now here is a new system of bribery, contrary to law, very ingenious in the contrivance, but, I believe, as unlikely to produce its intended effect upon the mind of man as any pretence that was ever used. Here Mr. Hastings changes his ground. Before, he was accused as a peculator; he did not deny the fact; he did not refund the money; he fought it off; he stood upon the defensive, and used all the means in his power to prevent the inquiry. That was the first era of his corruption,—a bold, ferocious, plain, downright use of power. In the second, he is grown a little more careful and guarded,—the effect of subtilty. He appears no longer as a defendant; he holds himself up with a firm, dignified, and erect countenance, and says, "I am not here any longer as a delinquent, a receiver of bribes, to be punished for what I have done wrong, or at least to suffer in my character for it. No: I am a great inventive genius, who have gone out of all the ordinary roads of finance, have made great discoveries in the unknown regions of that science, and have for the first time established the corruption of the supreme magistrate as a principle of resource for government."

      There are crimes, undoubtedly, of great magnitude, naturally fitted to create horror, and that loudly call for punishment, that have yet no idea of turpitude annexed to them; but unclean hands, bribery, venality, and peculation are offences of turpitude, such as, in a governor, at once debase the person and degrade the government itself, making it not only horrible, but vile and contemptible in the eyes of all mankind. In СКАЧАТЬ