TRIAL.

SATURDAY, 14TH JUNE, 1794.

EIGHTH DAY OF REPLY.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS,-Your lordships heard, upon the last day of the meeting of this high court, the distribution of the several matters which I should have occasion to lay before you, and by which I resolved to guide myself in the examination of the conduct of Mr. Hastings with regard to Bengal. I stated, that I should first show the manner in which he comported himself with regard to the people who were found in possession of the government when we first entered into Bengal. We have shown to your lordships the progressive steps by which the native government was brought into a state of annihilation. We have stated the manner in which that government was solemnly declared by a court of justice to be depraved and incompetent to act, and dead in law. We have shown to your lordships (and we have referred you to the document) that its death was declared, upon a certificate of the principal attending physician of the state, namely, Mr. Warren Hastings himself; this was declared in an affidavit made by him, wherein he has gone through all the powers of government, of which he had regularly despoiled the Nabob Mobarick ul Dowlah part by part, exactly according to the ancient formula by which a degraded knight was despoiled of his knighthood; they took, I say, from him all the powers of government, article by article, his helmet, his shield, his cuirass, at last they hacked off his spurs, and left him nothing. Mr. Hastings laid down all the premises, and left the judges to draw the conclusion.

Your lordships will remark (for you will find it on your minutes), that the judges have declared this affidavit of Mr. Hastings to be a delicate affidavit. We have heard of affidavits that were true; we have heard of affidavits that were

perjured; but this is the first instance that has come to our knowledge (and we receive it as a proof of Indian refinement) of a delicate affidavit. This affidavit of Mr. Hastings, we shall show to your lordships, is not entitled to the description of a good affidavit, however it might be entitled, in the opinion of those judges, to the description of a delicate affidavit, a phrase by which they appear to have meant that he had furnished all the proofs of the Nabob's deposition, but had delicately avoided to declare him expressly deposed. The judges drew, however, this indelicate conclusion; the conclusion they drew was founded upon the premises; it was very just and logical; for they declared that he was a mere cypher. They commended Mr. Hastings's delicacy, though they did not imitate it; but they pronounced sentence of deposition upon the said Nabob, and they declared that any letter or paper that was produced from him could not be considered as an act of government. So effectually was he removed by the judges out of the way, that no minority, no insanity, no physical cicumstances, not even death itself, could put a man more completely out of sight. They declare that they would consider his letters in no other light than as the letters of the Company, represented by the Governor-General and council. Thus, then, we find the Nabob legally dead.

We find next, that he was politically dead. Mr. Hastings, not satisfied with the affidavit he made in court, has thought proper upon record to inform the Company and the world of what he considered him to be civilly and politically.-[Minute entered by the Governor-General:]-"The Governor-General. I object to this motion [a motion relative to the trial above alluded to], because I do not apprehend that the declaration of the judges, respecting .the Nabob's sovereignty, will involve this government in any difficulties with the French or other foreign nations." [Mark, my lords, these political effects.] "How little the screen of the Nabob's name has hitherto availed will appear in the frequent and inconclusive correspondence which has been maintained with the foreign settlements, the French especially, since the Company have thought proper to stand forth in their real character in the exercise of the dewanny. From that period the government of these provinces has been wholly theirs, nor can all the subtilties

and distinctions of political sophistry conceal the possession of power, where the exercise of it is openly practised and universally felt in its operation.-In deference to the commands of the Company, we have generally endeavoured, in all our correspondence with foreigners, to evade the direct avowal of our possessing the actual rule of the country; employing the unapplied term government for the power to which we exacted their submission; but I do not remember any instance, and I hope none will be found, of our having been so disingenuous as to disclaim our own power, or to affirm that the Nabob was the real sovereign of those provinces. In effect I do not hesitate to say, that I look upon this state of indecision to have been productive of all the embarrassments which we have experienced with the foreign settlements ; none of them have ever owned any dominion but that of the British government in these provinces. Mr. Chevalier has repeatedly declared that he will not acknowledge any other, but will look to that only for the support of the privileges possessed by his nation, and shall protest against that alone as responsible for any act of power by which their privileges may be violated or their property disturbed. The Dutch, the Danes, have severally applied to this government, as to the ruling power, for the grant of indulgences and the redress of their grievances. In our replies to all, we have constantly assumed the prerogatives of that character, but eluded the direct avowal of it; under the name of influence, we have offered them protection, and we have granted them the indulgences of government, under elusive expressions, sometimes applied to our treaties with the Nabobs, sometimes to our own rights as the dewan, sometimes openly declaring the virtual rule which we held of these provinces, we have contended with them for the rights of government, and threatened to repel with force the encroachments on it; we, in one or two instances, have actually put these threats into execution, by orders directly issued to the officers of government, and enforced by detachments from our own military forces. The Nabob was never consulted, nor was the pretence ever made that his orders or concurrence were necessary; in a word, we have always allowed ourselves to be treated as principals; we have treated as principals; but we have contented ourselves with letting our actions insinuate the character

which we effectually possessed, without asserting it.-For my own part, I have ever considered the reserve which has been enjoined on us in this respect as a consequence of the doubts which have long prevailed, and which are still suffered to subsist, respecting the rights of the British government and the Company to the property and dominion of these provinces, not as inferring a doubt with respect to any foreign power; it has, however, been productive of great inconveniences, it has prevented our acting with vigour in our disputes with the Dutch and French. The former refuse to this day the payment of the bahor pescush, although the right is incontestably against them, and we have threatened to enforce it. Both nations refuse to be bound by our decrees, or to submit to our regulations; they refuse to submit to the payment of the duties on the foreign commerce, but in their own way, which amounts almost to a total exemption; they refuse to submit to the duty of ten per cent. which is levied upon foreign salt, by which (unless a stop can be put to it by a more decisive rule) they will draw the whole of that important trade into their own colonies; and even in the single instance in which they have allowed us to prescribe to them, namely, the embargo on grain on the apprehension of a dearth, I am generally persuaded that they acquiesced from the secret design of taking the advantage of the general suspension, by exporting grain clandestinely under cover of their colours, which they knew would screen them from the rigor ous examination of our officers. We are precluded from forming many arrangements of general utility, because of their want of control over the European settlement; and a great part of the defects which subsist in the government and commercial state of the country are ultimately derived from this source. I have not the slightest suspicion that a more open and decided conduct would expose us to worse consequences from the European nations; on the contrary, we have the worst of the argument, while we contend with them under false colours, while they know us under the disguise, and we have not the confidence to disown it; what we have done and may do under an assumed character is full as likely to involve us in a war with France, a nation not much influenced by logical weapons, if such can be supposed to be the likely consequences of our own trifling disagreement with

them, as if we stood forth their avowed opponents. To conclude, instead of regretting, with Mr. Francis, the occasion which deprives us of so useless and hurtful a disguise, I should rather rejoice (were it really the case), and consider it as a crisis which freed the constitution of our government from one of its greatest defects."

Now, my lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is no morethe great arcanum of the state is avowed-it is avowed that the government is ours-that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations; and the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion, to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company. Here we perceive the exact and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate affidavit maker in a court of justice, and his indelicate declarations upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world, concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.

Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether his policy was right or wrong; hitherto we find the whole consistent, we find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences, which delicacy at first prevented him from producing, better recollection and more perfect policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob, your lordships see, is dead-dead in law-dead in politics-dead in a court of justice-dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere animal existence, it is all over with him.

I have now to state to your lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them ?-Your lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what nostrum, not hitherto pretended to by quacks in physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigour. My lords, I am about to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy as was never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the court of directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the court of directors but declare in favour of his own system and