The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X | Page 6

are,
for the most part, territorial revenues, great quit-rents issuing out of
lands. I shall say nothing either of the nature of this property, of the
rights of the people to it, or of the mode of exacting the rents, till that
great question of revenues, one of the greatest which we shall have to
lay before you, shall be brought before your Lordships particularly and
specially as an article of charge. I only mention it now as an
exemplification of the great principle of corruption which guided Mr.
Hastings's conduct.
When the ancient nobility, the great princes, (for such I may call them,)
a nobility, perhaps, as ancient as that of your Lordships, (and a more

truly noble body never existed in that character,)--my Lords, when all
the nobility, some of whom have borne the rank and port of princes, all
the gentry, all the freeholders of the country, had their estates in that
manner confiscated,--that is, either given to themselves to hold on the
footing of farmers, or totally confiscated,--when such an act of tyranny
was done, no doubt some good was pretended. This confiscation was
made by Mr. Hastings, and the lands let to these farmers for five years,
upon an idea which always accompanies his acts of oppression, the idea
of moneyed merit. He adopted this mode of confiscating the estates, and
letting them to farmers, for the avowed purpose of seeing how much it
was possible to take out of them. Accordingly, he set them up to this
wild and wicked auction, as it would have been, if it had been a real
one,--corrupt and treacherous, as it was,--he set these lands up for the
purpose of making that discovery, and pretended that the discovery
would yield a most amazing increase of rent. And for some time it
appeared so to do, till it came to the touchstone of experience; and then
it was found that there was a defalcation from these monstrous raised
revenues which were to cancel in the minds of the Directors the
wickedness of so atrocious, flagitious, and horrid an act of treachery.
At the end of five years what do you think was the failure? No less than
2,050,000l. Then a new source of corruption was opened,--that is, how
to deal with the balances: for every man who had engaged in these
transactions was a debtor to government, and the remission of that debt
depended upon the discretion of the Governor-General. Then the
persons who were to settle the composition of that immense debt, who
were to see how much was recoverable and how much not, were able to
favor, or to exact to the last shilling; and there never existed a doubt but
that not only upon the original cruel exaction, but upon the remission
afterwards, immense gains were derived. This will account for the
manner in which those stupendous fortunes which astonish the world
have been made. They have been made, first by a tyrannous exaction
from the people who were suffered to remain in possession of their own
land as farmers,--then by selling the rest to farmers at rents and under
hopes which could never be realized, and then getting money for the
relaxation of their debts. But whatever excuse, and however wicked,
there might have been for this wicked act, namely, that it carried upon
the face of it some sort of appearance of public good,--that is to say,

that sort of public good which Mr. Hastings so often professed, of
ruining the country for the benefit of the Company,--yet, in fact, this
business of balances is that nidus in which have been nustled and bred
and born all the corruptions of India, first by making extravagant
demands, and afterwards by making corrupt relaxations of them.
Besides this monstrous failure, in consequence of a miserable exaction
by which more was attempted to be forced from the country than it was
capable of yielding, and this by way of experiment, when your
Lordships come to inquire who the farmers-general of the revenue were,
you would naturally expect to find them to be the men in the several
countries who had the most interest, the greatest wealth, the best
knowledge of the revenue and resources of the country in which they
lived. Those would be thought the natural, proper farmers-general of
each district. No such thing, my Lords. They are found in the body of
people whom I have mentioned to your Lordships. They were almost
all let to Calcutta banians. Calcutta banians were the farmers of almost
the whole. They sub-delegated to others, who sometimes had
sub-delegates under them _ad infinitum_. The whole formed a system
together, through the succession of black tyrants scattered through the
country, in which you at last find the European at the end, sometimes