The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X | Page 8

venture to say it will make one of the
greatest, weightiest, and most material parts of the charge that is now
before you; as I believe I need not tell your Lordships that an attempt to
set up the whole landed interest of a kingdom to auction must be
attended, not only in that act, but every consequential act, with most
grievous and terrible consequences.
My Lords, I will now come to a scene of peculation of another kind:
namely, a peculation by the direct sale of offices of justice,--by the
direct sale of the successions of families,--by the sale of guardianships
and trusts, held most sacred among the people of India: by the sale of
them, not, as before, to farmers, not, as you might imagine, to near
relations of the families, but a sale of them to the unfaithful servants of
those families, their own perfidious servants, who had ruined their
estates, who, if any balances had accrued to the government, had been
the cause of those debts. Those very servants were put in power over
their estates, their persons, and their families, by Mr. Hastings, for a
shameful price. It will be proved to your Lordships, in the course of
this business, that Mr. Hastings has done this in another sacred trust,
the most sacred trust a man can have,--that is, in the case of those
vakeels, (as they call them,) agents, or attorneys, who had been sent to
assert and support the rights of their miserable masters before the

Council-General. It will be proved that these vakeels were by Mr.
Hastings, for a price to be paid for it, put in possession of the very
power, situation, and estates of those masters who sent them to Calcutta
to defend them from wrong and violence. The selling offices of justice,
the sale of succession in families, of guardianships and other sacred
trusts, the selling masters to their servants, and principals to the
attorneys they employed to defend themselves, were all parts of the
same system; and these were the horrid ways in which he received
bribes beyond any common rate.
When Mr. Hastings was appointed in the year 1773 to be
Governor-General of Bengal, together with Mr. Barwell, General
Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, the Company, knowing
the former corrupt state of their service, (but the whole corrupt system
of Mr. Hastings at that time not being known or even suspected at
home,) did order them, in discharge of the spirit of the act of
Parliament, to make an inquiry into all manner of corruptions and
malversations in office, without the exception of any persons whatever.
Your Lordships are to know that the act did expressly authorize the
Court of Directors to frame a body of instructions, and to give orders to
their new servants appointed under the act of Parliament, lest it should
be supposed that they, by their appointment under the act, could
supersede the authority of the Directors. The Directors, sensible of the
power left in them over their servants by the act of Parliament, though
their nomination was taken from them, did, agreeably to the spirit and
power of that act, give this order.
The Council consisted of two parties: Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell,
who were chosen and kept there upon the idea of their local knowledge;
and the other three, who were appointed on account of their great parts
and known integrity. And I will venture to say that those three
gentlemen did so execute their duty in India, in all the substantial parts
of it, that they will serve as a shield to cover the honor of England,
whenever this country is upbraided in India.
They found a rumor running through the country of great peculations
and oppressions. Soon after, when it was known what their instructions

were, and that the Council was ready, as is the first duty of all
governors, even when there is no express order, to receive complaints
against the oppressions and corruptions of government in any part of it,
they found such a body (and that body shall be produced to your
Lordships) of corruption and peculation in every walk, in every
department, in every situation of life, in the sale of the most sacred
trusts, and in the destruction of the most ancient families of the country,
as I believe in so short a time never was unveiled since the world
began.
Your Lordships would imagine that Mr. Hastings would at least
ostensibly have taken some part in endeavoring to bring these
corruptions before the public, or that he would at least have acted with
some little management in his opposition. But, alas! it was not in his
power; there was not one, I think, but I am sure very few, of these
general articles