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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)




But that the revolution and the purposes of the revolution might be
complete, to this committee were delegated, not only the functions of
all the inferior, but, what will surprise the House, those of the
supreme administration of revenue also. Hitherto the Governor-General
and Council had, in their revenue department, administered the finances
of those kingdoms. By the new scheme they are delegated to this
committee, who are only to report their proceedings for approbation.

The key to the whole transaction is given in one of the instructions to
the committee,--"that it is not necessary that they should enter
dissents." By this means the ancient plan of the Company's
administration was destroyed; but the plan of concealment was perfected.
To that moment the accounts of the revenues were tolerably clear,--or at
least means were furnished for inquiries, by which they might be
rendered satisfactory. In the obscure and silent gulf of this committee
everything is now buried. The thickest shades of night surround all
their transactions. No effectual means of detecting fraud,
mismanagement, or misrepresentation exist. The Directors, who have dared
to talk with such confidence on their revenues, know nothing about them.
What used to fill volumes is now comprised under a few dry heads on a
sheet of paper. The natives, a people habitually made to concealment,
are the chief managers of the revenue throughout the provinces. I mean
by natives such wretches as your rulers select out of them as most
fitted for their purposes. As a proper keystone to bind the arch, a
native, one Gunga Govind Sing, a man turned out of his employment by Sir
John Clavering for malversation in office, is made the corresponding
secretary, and, indeed, the great moving principle of their new board.

As the whole revenue and civil administration was thus subverted, and a
clandestine government substituted in the place of it, the judicial
institution underwent a like revolution. In 1772 there had been six
courts, formed out of the six provincial councils. Eighteen new ones
are appointed in their place, with each a judge, taken from the _junior_
servants of the Company. To maintain these eighteen courts, a tax is
levied on the sums in litigation, of two and one half per cent on the
great, and of five per cent on the less. This money is all drawn from
the provinces to Calcutta. The chief justice (the same who stays in
defiance of a vote of this House, and of his Majesty's recall) is
appointed at once the treasurer and disposer of these taxes, levied
without any sort of authority from the Company, from the Crown, or from
Parliament.

In effect, Sir, every legal, regular authority, in matters of revenue,
of political administration, of criminal law, of civil law, in many of
the most essential parts of military discipline, is laid level with the
ground; and an oppressive, irregular, capricious, unsteady, rapacious,
and peculating despotism, with a direct disavowal of obedience to any
authority at home, and without any fixed maxim, principle, or rule of
proceeding to guide them in India, is at present the state of your
charter-government over great kingdoms.

As the Company has made this use of their trust, I should ill discharge
mine, if I refused to give my most cheerful vote for the redress of
these abuses, by putting the affairs of so large and valuable a part of
the interests of this nation and of mankind into some steady hands,
possessing the confidence and assured of the support of this House,
until they can be restored to regularity, order, and consistency.

I have touched the heads of some of the grievances of the people and the
abuses of government. But I hope and trust you will give me credit, when
I faithfully assure you that I have not mentioned one fourth part of
what has come to my knowledge in your committee; and further, I have
full reason to believe that not one fourth part of the abuses are come
to my knowledge, by that or by any other means. Pray consider what I
have said only as an index to direct you in your inquiries.

If this, then, Sir, has been the use made of the trust of political
powers, internal and external, given by you in the charter, the next
thing to be seen is the conduct of the Company with regard to the
commercial trust. And here I will make a fair offer:--If it can be
proved that they have acted wisely, prudently, and frugally, as
merchants, I shall pass by the whole mass of their enormities as
statesmen. That they have not done this their present condition is proof
sufficient. Their distresses are said to be owing to their wars. This is
not wholly true. But if it were, is not that readiness to engage in
wars, which distinguishes them, and for which the Committee of Secrecy
has so branded their politics, founded on the falsest principles of
mercantile speculation?

The principle of buying cheap and selling dear is the first, the great
foundation of mercantile dealing. Have they ever attended to this
principle? Nay, for years have they not actually authorized in their
servants a total indifference as to the prices they were to pay?

A great deal of strictness in driving bargains for whatever we contract
is another of the principles of mercantile policy. Try the Company by
that test. Look at the contracts that are made for them. Is the Company
so much as a good commissary to their own armies? I engage to select for
you, out of the innumerable mass of their dealings, all conducted very
nearly alike, one contract only the excessive profits on which during a
short term would pay the whole of their year's dividend. I shall
undertake to show that upon two others the inordinate profits given,
with the losses incurred in order to secure those profits, would pay a
year's dividend more.

It is a third property of trading-men to see that their clerks do not
divert the dealings of the master to their own benefit. It was the other
day only, when their Governor and Council taxed the Company's investment
with a sum of fifty thousand pounds, as an inducement to persuade only
seven members of their Board of Trade to give their _honor_ that they
would abstain from such profits upon that investment, as they must have
violated their _oaths_, if they had made at all.

It is a fourth quality of a merchant to be exact in his accounts. What
will be thought, when you have fully before you the mode of accounting
made use of in the Treasury of Bengal? I hope you will have it soon.
With regard to one of their agencies, when it came to the material part,
the prime cost of the goods on which a commission of fifteen per cent
was allowed, to the astonishment of the factory to whom the commodities
were sent, the Accountant-General reports that he did not think himself
authorized to call for _vouchers_ relative to this and other
particulars,--because the agent was upon his _honor_ with regard to
them. A new principle of account upon honor seems to be regularly
established in their dealings and their treasury, which in reality
amounts to an entire annihilation of the principle of all accounts.

It is a fifth property of a merchant, who does not meditate a
fraudulent bankruptcy, to calculate his probable profits upon the money
he takes up to vest in business. Did the Company, when they bought goods
on bonds bearing eight per cent interest, at ten and even twenty per
cent discount, even ask themselves a question concerning the possibility
of advantage from dealing on these terms?

The last quality of a merchant I shall advert to is the taking care to
be properly prepared, in cash or goods in the ordinary course of sale,
for the bills which are drawn on them. Now I ask, whether they have ever
calculated the clear produce of any given sales, to make them tally with
the four million of bills which are come and coming upon them, so as at
the proper periods to enable the one to liquidate the other. No, they
have not. They are now obliged to borrow money of their own servants to
purchase their investment. The servants stipulate five per cent on the
capital they advance, if their bills should not be paid at the time when
they become due; and the value of the rupee on which they charge this
interest is taken at two shillings and a penny. Has the Company ever
troubled themselves to inquire whether their sales can bear the payment
of that interest, and at that rate of exchange? Have they once
considered the dilemma in which they are placed,--the ruin of their
credit in the East Indies, if they refuse the bills,--the ruin of their
credit and existence in England, if they accept them?

Indeed, no trace of equitable government is found in their politics, not
one trace of commercial principle in their mercantile dealing: and hence
is the deepest and maturest wisdom of Parliament demanded, and the best
resources of this kingdom must be strained, to restore them,--that is,
to restore the countries destroyed by the misconduct of the Company, and
to restore the Company itself, ruined by the consequences of their plans
for destroying what they were bound to preserve.

I required, if you remember, at my outset, a proof that these abuses
were habitual. But surely this is not necessary for me to consider as a
separate head; because I trust I have made it evident beyond a doubt, in
considering the abuses themselves, that they are regular, permanent, and
systematical.

I am now come to my last condition, without which, for one, I will never
readily lend my hand to the destruction of any established government,
which is,--that, in its present state, the government of the East India
Company is absolutely incorrigible.

Of this great truth I think there can be little doubt, after all that
has appeared in this House. It is so very clear, that I must consider
the leaving any power in their hands, and the determined resolution to
continue and countenance every mode and every degree of peculation,
oppression, and tyranny, to be one and the same thing. I look upon that
body incorrigible, from the fullest consideration both of their uniform
conduct and their present real and virtual constitution.

If they had not constantly been apprised of all the enormities committed
in India under their authority, if this state of things had been as much
a discovery to them as it was to many of us, we might flatter ourselves
that the detection of the abuses would lead to their reformation. I will
go further. If the Court of Directors had not uniformly condemned every
act which this House or any of its committees had condemned, if the
language in which they expressed their disapprobation against enormities
and their authors had not been much more vehement and indignant than any
ever used in this House, I should entertain some hopes. If they had not,
on the other hand, as uniformly commended all their servants who had
done their duty and obeyed their orders as they had heavily censured
those who rebelled, I might say, These people have been in an error, and
when they are sensible of it they will mend. But when I reflect on the
uniformity of their support to the objects of their uniform censure, and
the state of insignificance and disgrace to which all of those have been
reduced whom they approved, and that even utter ruin and premature death
have been among the fruits of their favor, I must be convinced, that in
this case, as in all others, hypocrisy is the only vice that never can
be cured.

Attend, I pray you, to the situation and prosperity of Benfield,
Hastings, and others of that sort. The last of these has been treated by
the Company with an asperity of reprehension that has no parallel. They
lament "that the power of disposing of their property for perpetuity
should fall into such hands." Yet for fourteen years, with little
interruption, he has governed all their affairs, of every description,
with an absolute sway. He has had himself the means of heaping up
immense wealth; and during that whole period, the fortunes of hundreds
have depended on his smiles and frowns. He himself tells you he is
incumbered with two hundred and fifty young gentlemen, some of them of
the best families in England, all of whom aim at returning with vast
fortunes to Europe in the prime of life. He has, then, two hundred and
fifty of your children as his hostages for your good behavior; and
loaded for years, as he has been, with the execrations of the natives,
with the censures of the Court of Directors, and struck and blasted with
resolutions of this House, he still maintains the most despotic power
ever known in India. He domineers with an overbearing sway in the
assemblies of his pretended masters; and it is thought in a degree rash
to venture to name his offences in this House, even as grounds of a
legislative remedy.

On the other hand, consider the fate of those who have met with the
applauses of the Directors. Colonel Monson, one of the best of men, had
his days shortened by the applauses, destitute of the support, of the
Company. General Clavering, whose panegyric was made in every dispatch
from England, whose hearse was bedewed with the tears and hung round
with the eulogies of the Court of Directors, burst an honest and
indignant heart at the treachery of those who ruined him by their
praises. Uncommon patience and temper supported Mr. Francis a while
longer under the baneful influence of the commendation of the Court of
Directors. His health, however, gave way at length; and in utter
despair, he returned to Europe. At his return, the doors of the India
House were shut to this man who had been the object of their constant
admiration. He has, indeed, escaped with life; but he has forfeited all
expectation of credit, consequence, party, and following. He may well
say, "_Me nemo ministro fur erit, atque ideo nulli comes exeo_." This
man, whose deep reach of thought, whose large legislative conceptions,
and whose grand plans of policy make the most shining part of our
Reports, from whence we have all learned our lessons, if we have learned
any good ones,--this man, from whose materials those gentlemen who have
least acknowledged it have yet spoken as from a brief,--this man, driven
from his employment, discountenanced by the Directors, has had no other
reward, and no other distinction, but that inward "sunshine of the soul"
which a good conscience can always bestow upon itself. He has not yet
had so much as a good word, but from a person too insignificant to make
any other return for the means with which he has been furnished for
performing his share of a duty which is equally urgent on us all.

Add to this, that, from the highest in place to the lowest, every
British subject, who, in obedience to the Company's orders, has been
active in the discovery of peculations, has been ruined. They have been
driven from India. When they made their appeal at home, they were not
heard; when they attempted to return, they were stopped. No artifice of
fraud, no violence of power, has been omitted to destroy them in
character as well as in fortune.

Worse, far worse, has been the fate of the poor creatures, the natives
of India, whom the hypocrisy of the Company has betrayed into complaint
of oppression and discovery of peculation. The first women in Bengal,
the Ranny of Rajeshahi, the Ranny of Burdwan, the Ranny of Ambooah, by
their weak and thoughtless trust in the Company's honor and protection,
are utterly ruined: the first of these women, a person of princely rank,
and once of correspondent fortune, who paid above two hundred thousand a
year quit-rent to the state, is, according to very credible information,
so completely beggared as to stand in need of the relief of alms.
Mahomed Reza Khan, the second Mussulman in Bengal, for having been
distinguished by the ill-omened honor of the countenance and protection
of the Court of Directors, was, without the pretence of any inquiry
whatsoever into his conduct, stripped of all his employments, and
reduced to the lowest condition. His ancient rival for power, the Rajah
Nundcomar, was, by an insult on everything which India holds respectable
and sacred, hanged in the face of all his nation by the judges you sent
to protect that people: hanged for a pretended crime, upon an _ex post
facto_ British act of Parliament, in the midst of his evidence against
Mr. Hastings. The accuser they saw hanged. The culprit, without
acquittal or inquiry, triumphs on the ground of that murder: a murder,
not of Nundcomar only, but of all living testimony, and even of evidence
yet unborn. From that time not a complaint has been heard from the
natives against their governors. All the grievances of India have found
a complete remedy.

Men will not look to acts of Parliament, to regulations, to
declarations, to votes, and resolutions. No, they are not such fools.
They will ask, What is the road to power, credit, wealth, and honors?
They will ask, What conduct ends in neglect, disgrace, poverty, exile,
prison, and gibbet? These will teach them the course which they are to
follow. It is your distribution of these that will give the character
and tone to your government. All the rest is miserable grimace.

When I accuse the Court of Directors of this habitual treachery in the
use of reward and punishment, I do not mean to include all the
individuals in that court. There have been, Sir, very frequently men of
the greatest integrity and virtue amongst them; and the contrariety in
the declarations and conduct of that court has arisen, I take it, from
this,--that the honest Directors have, by the force of matter of fact on
the records, carried the reprobation of the evil measures of the
servants in India. This could not be prevented, whilst these records
stared them in the face; nor were the delinquents, either here or there,
very solicitous about their reputation, as long as they were able to
secure their power. The agreement of their partisans to censure them
blunted for a while the edge of a severe proceeding. It obtained for
them a character of impartiality, which enabled them to recommend with
some sort of grace, what will always carry a plausible appearance, those
treacherous expedients called moderate measures. Whilst these were under
discussion, new matter of complaint came over, which seemed to antiquate
the first. The same circle was here trod round once more; and thus
through years they proceeded in a compromise of censure for punishment,
until, by shame and despair, one after another, almost every man who
preferred his duty to the Company to the interest of their servants has
been driven from that court.

This, Sir, has been their conduct: and it has been the result of the
alteration which was insensibly made in their constitution. The change
was made insensibly; but it is now strong and adult, and as public and
declared as it is fixed beyond all power of reformation: so that there
is none who hears me that is not as certain as I am, that the Company,
in the sense in which it was formerly understood, has no existence.

The question is not, what injury you may do to the proprietors of India
stock; for there are no such men to be injured. If the active, ruling
part of the Company, who form the General Court, who fill the offices
and direct the measures, (the rest tell for nothing,) were persons who
held their stock as a means of their subsistence, who in the part they
took were only concerned in the government of India for the rise or fall
of their dividend, it would be indeed a defective plan of policy. The
interest of the people who are governed by them would not be their
primary object,--perhaps a very small part of their consideration at
all. But then they might well be depended on, and perhaps more than
persons in other respects preferable, for preventing the peculations of
their servants to their own prejudice. Such a body would not easily have
left their trade as a spoil to the avarice of those who received their
wages. But now things are totally reversed. The stock is of no value,
whether it be the qualification of a Director or Proprietor; and it is
impossible that it should. A Director's qualification may be worth about
two thousand five hundred pounds,--and the interest, at eight per cent,
is about one hundred and sixty pounds a year. Of what value is that,
whether it rise to ten, or fall to six, or to nothing; to him whose son,
before he is in Bengal two months, and before he descends the stops of
the Council-Chamber, sells the grant of a single contract for forty
thousand pounds? Accordingly, the stock is bought up in qualifications.
The vote is not to protect the stock, but the stock is bought to acquire
the vote; and the end of the vote is to cover and support, against
justice, some man of power who has made an obnoxious fortune in India,
or to maintain in power those who are actually employing it in the
acquisition of such a fortune,--and to avail themselves, in return, of
his patronage, that he may shower the spoils of the East, "barbaric
pearl and gold," on them, their families, and dependants. So that all
the relations of the Company are not only changed, but inverted. The
servants in India are not appointed by the Directors, but the Directors
are chosen by them. The trade is carried on with their capitals. To them
the revenues of the country are mortgaged. The seat of the supreme power
is in Calcutta. The house in Leadenhall Street is nothing more than a
'change for their agents, factors, and deputies to meet in, to take care
of their affairs and support their interests,--and this so avowedly,
that we see the known agents of the delinquent servants marshalling and
disciplining their forces, and the prime spokesmen in all their
assemblies.

Everything has followed in this order, and according to the natural
train of events. I will close what I have to say on the incorrigible
condition of the Company, by stating to you a few facts that will leave
no doubt of the obstinacy of that corporation, and of their strength
too, in resisting the reformation of their servants. By these facts you
will be enabled to discover the sole grounds upon which they are
tenacious of their charter.

It is now more than two years, that upon account of the gross abuses and
ruinous situation of the Company's affairs, (which occasioned the cry of
the whole world long before it was taken up here,) that we instituted
two committees to inquire into the mismanagements by which the Company's
affairs had been brought to the brink of ruin. These inquiries had been
pursued with unremitting diligence, and a great body of facts was
collected and printed for general information. In the result of those
inquiries, although the committees consisted of very different
descriptions, they were unanimous. They joined in censuring the conduct
of the Indian administration, and enforcing the responsibility upon two
men, whom this House, in consequence of these reports, declared it to be
the duty of the Directors to remove from their stations, and recall to
Great Britain,--"_because they had acted in a manner repugnant to the
honor and policy of this nation, and thereby brought great calamities on
India and enormous expenses on the East India Company_."

Here was no attempt on the charter. Here was no question of their
privileges. To vindicate their own honor, to support their own
interests, to enforce obedience to their own orders,--these were the
sole object of the monitory resolution of this House. But as soon as the
General Court could assemble, they assembled to demonstrate who they
really were. Regardless of the proceedings of this House, they ordered
the Directors not to carry into effect any resolution they might come to
for the removal of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Hornby. The Directors, still
retaining some shadow of respect to this House, instituted an inquiry
themselves, which continued from June to October, and, after an
attentive perusal and full consideration of papers, resolved to take
steps for removing the persons who had been the objects of our
resolution, but not without a violent struggle against evidence. Seven
Directors went so far as to enter a protest against the vote of their
court. Upon this the General Court takes the alarm: it reassembles; it
orders the Directors to rescind their resolution, that is, not to recall
Mr. Hastings and Mr. Hornby, and to despise the resolution of the House
of Commons. Without so much as the pretence of looking into a single
paper, without the formality of instituting any committee of inquiry,
they superseded all the labors of their own Directors and of this House.

It will naturally occur to ask, how it was possible that they should not
attempt some sort of examination into facts, as a color for their
resistance to a public authority proceeding so very deliberately, and
exerted, apparently at least, in favor of their own. The answer, and the
only answer which can be given, is, that they were afraid that their
true relation should be mistaken. They were afraid that their patrons
and masters in India should attribute their support of them to an
opinion of their cause, and not to an attachment to their power. They
were afraid it should be suspected that they did not mean blindly to
support them in the use they made of that power. They determined to show
that they at least were set against reformation: that they were firmly
resolved to bring the territories, the trade, and the stock of the
Company to ruin, rather than be wanting in fidelity to their nominal
servants and real masters, in the ways they took to their private
fortunes.

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