Life of R.B. Sheridan, vol 2 | Page 7

was not the secret, but the notoriety of it was the secret; it was a rebellion which had for its object the destruction of no human creature but those who planned it;--it was a rebellion which, according to Mr. Middleton's expression, no man, either horse or foot, ever marched to quell. The Chief Justice was the only man who took the field against it,--the force against which it was raised, instantly withdrew to give it elbow-room,--and, even then, it was a rebellion which perversely showed itself in acts of hospitality to the Nabob whom it was to dethrone, and to the English whom it was to extirpate;--it was a rebellion plotted by two feeble old women, headed by two eunuchs, and suppressed by an affidavit."
The acceptance, or rather exaction, of the private present of ￡100,000 is thus animadverted upon:
"My Lords, such was the distressed situation of the Nabob about a twelvemonth before Mr. Hastings met him at Chunar. It was a twelvemonth, I say, after this miserable scene--a mighty period in the progress of British rapacity--it was (if the Counsel will) after some natural calamities had aided the superior vigor of British violence and rapacity--it was after the country had felt other calamities besides the English--it was after the angry dispensations of Providence had, with a progressive severity of chastisement, visited the land with a famine one year, and with a Col. Hannay the next--it was after he, this Hannay, had returned to retrace the steps of his former ravages--it was after he and his voracious crew had come to plunder ruins which himself had made, and to glean from desolation the little that famine had spared, or rapine overlooked;--then it was that this miserable bankrupt prince marching through his country, besieged by the clamors of his starving subjects, who cried to him for protection through their cages--meeting the curses of some of his subjects, and the prayers of others--with famine at his heels, and reproach following him,--then it was that this Prince is represented as exercising this act of prodigal bounty to the very man whom he here reproaches--to the very man whose policy had extinguished his power, and whose creatures had desolated his country. To talk of a free-will gift! it is audacious and ridiculous to name the supposition. It was not a free-will gift. What was it then? was it a bribe? or was it extortion? I shall prove it was both--it was an act of gross bribery and of rank extortion."
Again he thus adverts to this present:--
"The first thing he does is, to leave Calcutta, in order to go to the relief of the distressed Nabob. The second thing, is to take 100,000l from that distressed Nabob on account of the distressed Company. And the third thing is to ask of the distressed Company this very same sum on account of the distresses of Mr. Hastings. There never were three distresses that seemed so little reconcilable with one another."
Anticipating the plea of state-necessity, which might possibly be set up in defence of the measures of the Governor-General, he breaks out into the following rhetorical passage:--
"State necessity! no, my Lords; that imperial tyrant, _State Necessity_, is yet a generous despot,--bold is his demeanor, rapid his decisions, and terrible his grasp. But what he does, my Lords, he dares avow, and avowing, scorns any other justification, than the great motives that placed the iron sceptre in his hand. But a quibbling, pilfering, prevaricating State-Necessity, that tries to skulk behind the skirts of Justice;--a State-Necessity that tries to steal a pitiful justification from whispered accusations and fabricated rumors. No, my Lords, that is no State Necessity;--tear off the mask, and you see coarse, vulgar avarice,--you see speculation, lurking under the gaudy disguise, and adding the guilt of libelling the public honor to its own private fraud.
"My Lords, I say this, because I am sure the Managers would make every allowance that state-necessity could claim upon any great emergency. If any great man in bearing the arms of this country;--if any Admiral, bearing the vengeance and the glory of Britain to distant coasts, should be compelled to some rash acts of violence, in order, perhaps, to give food to those who are shedding their blood for Britain;--if any great General, defending some fortress, barren itself, perhaps, but a pledge of the pride, and, with the pride, of the power of Britain; if such a man were to * * * while he himself was * * at the top, like an eagle besieged in its imperial nest; [Footnote: The Reporter, at many of these passages, seems to have thrown aside his pen in despair.]--would the Commons of England come to accuse or to arraign such acts of state-necessity? No."
In describing that swarm of English pensioners and placemen, who were still,