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

E >> Edmund Burke >> The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. II. (of 12)




My third assertion, relative to the abuse made of the right of war and
peace, is, that there are none who have ever confided in us who have not
been utterly ruined. The examples I have given of Ragonaut Row, of
Guickwar, of the Rana of Gohud, are recent. There is proof more than
enough in the condition of the Mogul,--in the slavery and indigence of
the Nabob of Oude,--the exile of the Rajah of Benares,--the beggary of
the Nabob of Bengal,--the undone and captive condition of the Rajah and
kingdom of Tanjore,--the destruction of the Polygars,--and, lastly, in
the destruction of the Nabob of Arcot himself, who, when his dominions
were invaded, was found entirely destitute of troops, provisions,
stores, and (as he asserts) of money, being a million in debt to the
Company, and four millions to others: the many millions which he had
extorted from so many extirpated princes and their desolated countries
having (as he has frequently hinted) been expended for the ground-rent
of his mansion-house in an alley in the suburbs of Madras. Compare the
condition of all these princes with the power and authority of all the
Mahratta states, with the independence and dignity of the Subah of the
Deccan, and the mighty strength, the resources, and the manly struggle
of Hyder Ali,--and then the House will discover the effects, on every
power in India, of an easy confidence or of a rooted distrust in the
faith of the Company.

These are some of my reasons, grounded on the abuse of the external
political trust of that body, for thinking myself not only justified,
but bound, to declare against those chartered rights which produce so
many wrongs. I should deem myself the wickedest of men, if any vote of
mine could contribute to the continuance of so great an evil.

Now, Sir, according to the plan I proposed, I shall take notice of the
Company's internal government, as it is exercised first on the dependent
provinces, and then as it affects those under the direct and immediate
authority of that body. And here, Sir, before I enter into the spirit of
their interior government, permit me to observe to you upon a few of the
many lines of difference which are to be found between the vices of the
Company's government and those of the conquerors who preceded us in
India, that we may be enabled a little the better to see our way in an
attempt to the necessary reformation.

The several irruptions of Arabs, Tartars, and Persians into India were,
for the greater part, ferocious, bloody, and wasteful in the extreme:
our entrance into the dominion of that country was, as generally, with
small comparative effusion of blood,--being introduced by various frauds
and delusions, and by taking advantage of the incurable, blind, and
senseless animosity which the several country powers bear towards each
other, rather than by open force. But the difference in favor of the
first conquerors is this. The Asiatic conquerors very soon abated of
their ferocity, because they made the conquered country their own. They
rose or fell with the rise or fall of the territory they lived in.
Fathers there deposited the hopes of their posterity; and children there
beheld the monuments of their fathers. Here their lot was finally cast;
and it is the natural wish of all that their lot should not be cast in a
bad land. Poverty, sterility, and desolation are not a recreating
prospect to the eye of man; and there are very few who can bear to grow
old among the curses of a whole people. If their passion or their
avarice drove the Tartar lords to acts of rapacity or tyranny, there was
time enough, even in the short life of man, to bring round the ill
effects of an abuse of power upon the power itself. If hoards were made
by violence and tyranny, they were still domestic hoards; and domestic
profusion, or the rapine of a more powerful and prodigal hand, restored
them to the people. With many disorders, and with few political checks
upon power, Nature had still fair play; the sources of acquisition were
not dried up; and therefore the trade, the manufactures, and the
commerce of the country flourished. Even avarice and usury itself
operated both for the preservation and the employment of national
wealth. The husbandman and manufacturer paid heavy interest, but then
they augmented the fund from whence they were again to borrow. Their
resources were dearly bought, but they were sure; and the general stock
of the community grew by the general effort.

But under the English government all this order is reversed. The Tartar
invasion was mischievous; but it is our protection that destroys India.
It was their enmity; but it is our friendship. Our conquest there, after
twenty years, is as crude as it was the first day. The natives scarcely
know what it is to see the gray head of an Englishman. Young men (boys
almost) govern there, without society and without sympathy with the
natives. They have no more social habits with the people than if they
still resided in England,--nor, indeed, any species of intercourse, but
that which is necessary to making a sudden fortune, with a view to a
remote settlement. Animated with all the avarice of age and all the
impetuosity of youth, they roll in one after another, wave after wave;
and there is nothing before the eyes of the natives but an endless,
hopeless prospect of new flights of birds of prey and passage, with
appetites continually renewing for a food that is continually wasting.
Every rupee of profit made by an Englishman is lost forever to India.
With us are no retributory superstitions, by which a foundation of
charity compensates, through ages, to the poor, for the rapine and
injustice of a day. With us no pride erects stately monuments which
repair the mischiefs which pride had produced, and which adorn a country
out of its own spoils. England has erected no churches, no
hospitals,[56] no palaces, no schools; England has built no bridges,
made no high-roads, cut no navigations, dug out no reservoirs. Every
other conqueror of every other description has left some monument,
either of state or beneficence, behind him. Were we to be driven out of
India this day, nothing would remain to tell that it had been possessed,
during the inglorious period of our dominion, by anything better than
the orang-outang or the tiger.

There is nothing in the boys we send to India worse than in the boys
whom we are whipping at school, or that we see trailing a pike or
bending over a desk at home. But as English youth in India drink the
intoxicating draught of authority and dominion before their heads are
able to bear it, and as they are full grown in fortune long before they
are ripe in principle, neither Nature nor reason have any opportunity to
exert themselves for remedy of the excesses of their premature power.
The consequences of their conduct, which in good minds (and many of
theirs are probably such) might produce penitence or amendment, are
unable to pursue the rapidity of their flight. Their prey is lodged in
England; and the cries of India are given to seas and winds, to be blown
about, in every breaking up of the monsoon, over a remote and unhearing
ocean. In India all the vices operate by which sudden fortune is
acquired: in England are often displayed, by the same persons, the
virtues which dispense hereditary wealth. Arrived in England, the
destroyers of the nobility and gentry of a whole kingdom will find the
best company in this nation at a board of elegance and hospitality. Here
the manufacturer and husbandman will bless the just and punctual hand
that in India has torn the cloth from the loom, or wrested the scanty
portion of rice and salt from the peasant of Bengal, or wrung from him
the very opium in which he forgot his oppressions and his oppressor.
They marry into your families; they enter into your senate; they ease
your estates by loans; they raise their value by demand; they cherish
and protect your relations which lie heavy on your patronage; and there
is scarcely an house in the kingdom that does not feel some concern and
interest that makes all reform of our Eastern government appear
officious and disgusting, and, on the whole, a most discouraging
attempt. In such an attempt you hurt those who are able to return
kindness or to resent injury. If you succeed, you save those who cannot
so much as give you thanks. All these things show the difficulty of the
work we have on hand: but they show its necessity, too. Our Indian
government is in its best state a grievance. It is necessary that the
correctives should be uncommonly vigorous, and the work of men sanguine,
warm, and even impassioned in the cause. But it is an arduous thing to
plead against abuses of a power which originates from your own country,
and affects those whom we are used to consider as strangers.

I shall certainly endeavor to modulate myself to this temper; though I
am sensible that a cold style of describing actions, which appear to me
in a very affecting light, is equally contrary to the justice due to
the people and to all genuine human feelings about them. I ask pardon of
truth and Nature for this compliance. But I shall be very sparing of
epithets either to persons or things. It has been said, (and, with
regard to one of them, with truth,) that Tacitus and Machiavel, by their
cold way of relating enormous crimes, have in some sort appeared not to
disapprove them; that they seem a sort of professors of the art of
tyranny; and that they corrupt the minds of their readers by not
expressing the detestation and horror that naturally belong to horrible
and detestable proceedings. But we are in general, Sir, so little
acquainted with Indian details, the instruments of oppression under
which the people suffer are so hard to be understood, and even the very
names of the sufferers are so uncouth and strange to our ears, that it
is very difficult for our sympathy to fix upon these objects. I am sure
that some of us have come down stairs from the committee-room with
impressions on our minds which to us were the inevitable results of our
discoveries, yet, if we should venture to express ourselves in the
proper language of our sentiments to other gentlemen not at all prepared
to enter into the cause of them, nothing could appear more harsh and
dissonant, more violent and unaccountable, than our language and
behavior. All these circumstances are not, I confess, very favorable to
the idea of our attempting to govern India at all. But there we are;
there we are placed by the Sovereign Disposer; and we must do the best
we can in our situation. The situation of man is the preceptor of his
duty.

Upon the plan which I laid down, and to which I beg leave to return, I
was considering the conduct of the Company to those nations which are
indirectly subject to their authority. The most considerable of the
dependent princes is the Nabob of Oude. My right honorable friend,[57]
to whom we owe the remedial bills on your table, has already pointed out
to you, in one of the reports, the condition of that prince, and as it
stood in the time he alluded to. I shall only add a few circumstances
that may tend to awaken some sense of the manner in which the condition
of the people is affected by that of the prince, and involved in
it,--and to show you, that, when we talk of the sufferings of princes,
we do not lament the oppression of individuals,--and that in these cases
the high and the low suffer together.

In the year 1779, the Nabob of Oude represented, through the British
resident at his court, that the number of Company's troops stationed in
his dominions was a main cause of his distress,--and that all those
which he was not bound by treaty to maintain should be withdrawn, as
they had greatly diminished his revenue and impoverished his country. I
will read you, if you please, a few extracts from these representations.

He states, "that the country and cultivation are abandoned, and this
year in particular, from the excessive drought of the season, deductions
of many lacs having been allowed to the farmers, who are still left
unsatisfied"; and then he proceeds with a long detail of his own
distress, and that of his family and all his dependants; and adds, "that
the new-raised brigade is not only quite useless to my government, but
is, moreover, the cause of much loss both in revenues and customs. The
detached body of troops under European officers bring nothing _but
confusion to the affairs of my government, and are entirely their own
masters_." Mr. Middleton, Mr. Hastings's confidential resident, vouches
for the truth of this representation in its fullest extent. "I am
concerned to confess that there is too good ground for this plea. _The
misfortune hat been general throughout the whole of the vizier's_ [the
Nabob of Oude] _dominions_, obvious to everybody; and so _fatal_ have
been its consequences, that no person of either credit or character
would enter into engagements with government for farming the country."
He then proceeds to give strong instances of the general calamity, and
its effects.

It was now to be seen what steps the Governor-General and Council took
for the relief of this distressed country, long laboring under the
vexations of men, and now stricken by the hand of God. The case of a
general famine is known to relax the severity even of the most rigorous
government.--Mr. Hastings does not deny or show the least doubt of the
fact. The representation is humble, and almost abject. On this
representation from a great prince of the distress of his subjects, Mr.
Hastings falls into a violent passion,--such as (it seems) would be
unjustifiable in any one who speaks of any part of _his_ conduct. He
declares "that the _demands_, the _tone_ in which they were asserted,
and the _season_ in which they were made, are all equally alarming, and
appear to him to require an adequate degree of firmness in this board in
_opposition_ to them." He proceeds to deal out very unreserved language
on the person and character of the Nabob and his ministers. He declares,
that, in a division between him and the Nabob, "_the strongest must
decide_." With regard to the urgent and instant necessity from the
failure of the crops, he says, "that _perhaps_ expedients _may be found_
for affording a _gradual_ relief from the burden of which he so heavily
complains, and it shall be my endeavor to seek them out": and lest he
should be suspected of too much haste to alleviate sufferings and to
remove violence, he says, "that these must be _gradually_ applied, and
their complete _effect_ may be _distant_; and this, I conceive, _is all_
he can claim of right."

This complete effect of his lenity is distant indeed. Rejecting this
demand, (as he calls the Nabob's abject supplication,) he attributes it,
as he usually does all things of the kind, to the division in their
government, and says, "This is a powerful motive with _me_ (however
inclined I might be, _upon any other occasion_, to yield to some _part_
of his demand) to give them an _absolute and unconditional refusal_ upon
the present,--and even _to bring to punishment, if my influence can
produce that effect, those incendiaries who have endeavored to make
themselves the instruments of division between us_."

Here, Sir, is much heat and passion,--but no more consideration of the
distress of the country, from a failure of the means of subsistence, and
(if possible) the worse evil of an useless and licentious soldiery, than
if they were the most contemptible of all trifles. A letter is written,
in consequence, in such a style of lofty despotism as I believe has
hitherto been unexampled and unheard of in the records of the East. The
troops were continued. The _gradual_ relief, whose effect was to be so
_distant_, has _never_ been substantially and beneficially applied,--and
the country is ruined.

Mr. Hastings, two years after, when it was too late, saw the absolute
necessity of a removal of the intolerable grievance of this licentious
soldiery, which, under pretence of defending it, held the country under
military execution. A new treaty and arrangement, according to the
pleasure of Mr. Hastings, took place; and this new treaty was broken in
the old manner, in every essential article. The soldiery were again
sent, and again set loose. The effect of all his manoeuvres, from which
it seems he was sanguine enough to entertain hopes, upon the state of
the country, he himself informs us,--"The event has proved the _reverse_
of these hopes, and _accumulation of distress, debasement, and
dissatisfaction_ to the Nabob, and _disappointment and disgrace to
me_.--Every measure [which he had himself proposed] has been _so
conducted_ as to give him cause of displeasure. There are no officers
established by which his affairs could be regularly conducted: mean,
incapable, and indigent men have been appointed. A number of the
districts without authority, and without the means of personal
protection; some of them have been murdered by the zemindars, and those
zemindars, instead of punishment, have been permitted to retain their
zemindaries, with independent authority; _all_ the other zemindars
suffered to rise up in rebellion, and to insult the authority of the
sircar, without any attempt made to suppress them; and the Company's
debt, instead of being discharged by the assignments and extraordinary
sources of money provided for that _purpose, is likely to exceed even
the amount at which it stood at the time in which the arrangement with
his Excellency was concluded_." The House will smile at the resource on
which the Directors take credit as such a certainty in their curious
account.

This is Mr. Hastings's own narrative of the effects of his own
settlement. This is the state of the country which we have been told is
in perfect peace and order; and, what is curious, he informs us, that
_every part of this was foretold to him in the order and manner in which
it happened_, at the very time he made his arrangement of men and
measures.

The invariable course of the Company's policy is this: either they set
up some prince too odious to maintain himself without the necessity of
their assistance, or they soon render him odious by making him the
instrument of their government. In that case troops are bountifully sent
to him to maintain his authority. That he should have no want of
assistance, a civil gentleman, called a Resident, is kept at his court,
who, under pretence of providing duly for the pay of these troops, gets
assignments on the revenue into his hands. Under his provident
management, debts soon accumulate; new assignments are made for these
debts; until, step by step, the whole revenue, and with it the whole
power of the country, is delivered into his hands. The military do not
behold without a virtuous emulation the moderate gains of the civil
department. They feel that in a country driven to habitual rebellion by
the civil government the military is necessary; and they will not permit
their services to go unrewarded. Tracts of country are delivered over to
their discretion. Then it is found proper to convert their commanding
officers into farmers of revenue. Thus, between the well-paid civil and
well-rewarded military establishment, the situation of the natives may
be easily conjectured. The authority of the regular and lawful
government is everywhere and in every point extinguished. Disorders and
violences arise; they are repressed by other disorders and other
violences. Wherever the collectors of the revenue and the farming
colonels and majors move, ruin is about them, rebellion before and
behind them. The people in crowds fly out of the country; and the
frontier is guarded by lines of troops, not to exclude an enemy, but to
prevent the escape of the inhabitants.

By these means, in the course of not more than four or five years, this
once opulent and flourishing country, which, by the accounts given in
the Bengal consultations, yielded more than three crore of sicca rupees,
that is, above three millions sterling, annually, is reduced, as far as
I can discover, in a matter purposely involved in the utmost perplexity,
to less than one million three hundred thousand pounds, and that exacted
by every mode of rigor that can be devised. To complete the business,
most of the wretched remnants of this revenue are mortgaged, and
delivered into the hands of the usurers at Benares (for there alone are
to be found some lingering remains of the ancient wealth of these
regions) at an interest of near _thirty per cent per annum_.

The revenues in this manner failing, they seized upon the estates of
every person of eminence in the country, and, under the name of
_resumption_, confiscated their property. I wish, Sir, to be understood
universally and literally, when I assert that there is not left one man
of property and substance for his rank in the whole of these provinces,
in provinces which are nearly the extent of England and Wales taken
together: not one landholder, not one banker, not one merchant, not one
even of those who usually perish last, the _ultimum moriens_ in a ruined
state, not one farmer of revenue.

One country for a while remained, which stood as an island in the midst
of the grand waste of the Company's dominion. My right honorable friend,
in his admirable speech on moving the bill, just touched the situation,
the offences, and the punishment of a native prince, called Fizulla
Khan. This man, by policy and force, had protected himself from the
general extirpation of the Rohilla chiefs. He was secured (if that were
any security) by a treaty. It was stated to you, as it was stated by the
enemies of that unfortunate man, "that the whole of his country _is_
what the whole country of the Rohillas _was_, cultivated like a garden,
without one neglected spot in it." Another accuser says,--"Fyzoolah
Khan, though a bad soldier, [that is the true source of his misfortune,]
has approved himself a good aumil,--having, it is supposed, in the
course of a few years, at least _doubled_ the population and revenue of
his country." In another part of the correspondence he is charged with
making his country an asylum for the oppressed peasants who fly from the
territories of Oude. The improvement of his revenue, arising from this
single crime, (which Mr. Hastings considers as tantamount to treason,)
is stated at an hundred and fifty thousand pounds a year.

Dr. Swift somewhere says, that he who could make two blades of grass
grow where but one grew before was a greater benefactor to the human
race than all the politicians that ever existed. This prince, who would
have been deified by antiquity, who would have been ranked with Osiris,
and Bacchus, and Ceres, and the divinities most propitious to men, was,
for those very merits, by name attacked by the Company's government, as
a cheat, a robber, a traitor. In the same breath in which he was
accused as a rebel, he was ordered at once to furnish five thousand
horse. On delay, or (according to the technical phrase, when any
remonstrance is made to them) "_on evasion_," he was declared a violator
of treaties, and everything he had was to be taken from him. Not one
word, however, of horse in this treaty.

The territory of this Fizulla Khan, Mr. Speaker, is less than the County
of Norfolk. It is an inland country, full seven hundred miles from any
seaport, and not distinguished for any one considerable branch of
manufacture whatsoever. From this territory several very considerable
sums had at several times been paid to the British resident. The demand
of cavalry, without a shadow or decent pretext of right, amounted to
three hundred thousand a year more, at the lowest computation; and it is
stated, by the last person sent to negotiate, as a demand of little use,
if it could be complied with,--but that the compliance was impossible,
as it amounted to more than his territories could supply, if there had
been no other demand upon him. Three hundred thousand pounds a year from
an inland country not so large as Norfolk!

The thing most extraordinary was to hear the culprit defend himself from
the imputation of his virtues, as if they had been the blackest
offences. He extenuated the superior cultivation of his country. He
denied its population. He endeavored to prove that he had often sent
back the poor peasant that sought shelter with him.--I can make no
observation on this.

After a variety of extortions and vexations, too fatiguing to you, too
disgusting to me, to go through with, they found "that they ought to be
in a better state to warrant forcible means"; they therefore contented
themselves with a gross sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds for
their present demand. They offered him, indeed, an indemnity from their
exactions in future for three hundred thousand pounds more. But he
refused to buy their securities,--pleading (probably with truth) his
poverty; but if the plea were not founded, in my opinion very wisely:
not choosing to deal any more in that dangerous commodity of the
Company's faith; and thinking it better to oppose distress and unarmed
obstinacy to uncolored exaction than to subject himself to be considered
as a cheat, if he should make a treaty in the least beneficial to
himself.

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