The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. X | Page 5

no presents.
I am to mark to your Lordships, that this law and this covenant did consider indirect ways of taking presents--taking them by others, and such like--directly in the very same light as they considered taking them by themselves. It is perhaps a much more dangerous way; because it adds to the crime a false, prevaricating mode of concealing it, and makes it much more mischievous by admitting others into the participation of it. Mr. Hastings has said, (and it is one of the general complaints of Mr. Hastings,) that he is made answerable for the acts of other men. It is a thing inherent in the nature of his situation. All those who enjoy a great superintending trust, which is to regulate the whole affairs of an empire, are responsible for the acts and conduct of other men, so far as they had anything to do with appointing them, or holding them in their places, or having any sort of inspection into their conduct. But when a Governor presumes to remove from their situations those persons whom the public authority and sanction of the Company have appointed, and obtrudes upon them by violence other persons, superseding the orders of his masters, he becomes doubly responsible for their conduct. If the persons he names should be of notorious evil character and evil principles, and if this should be perfectly known to himself, and of public notoriety to the rest of the world, then another strong responsibility attaches on him for the acts of those persons.
Governors, we know very well, cannot with their own hands be continually receiving bribes,--for then they must have as many hands as one of the idols in an Indian temple, in order to receive all the bribes which a Governor-General may receive,--but they have them vicariously. As there are many offices, so he has had various officers for receiving and distributing his bribes; he has a great many, some white and some black agents. The white men are loose and licentious; they are apt to have resentments, and to be bold in revenging them. The black men are very secret and mysterious; they are not apt to have very quick resentments, they have not the same liberty and boldness of language which characterize Europeans; and they have fears, too, for themselves, which makes it more likely that they will conceal anything committed to them by Europeans. Therefore Mr. Hastings had his black agents, not one, two, three, but many, disseminated through the country: no two of them, hardly, appear to be in the secret of any one bribe. He has had likewise his white agents,--they were necessary,--a Mr. Larkins and a Mr. Croftes. Mr. Croftes was sub-treasurer, and Mr. Larkins accountant-general. These were the last persons of all others that should have had anything to do with bribes; yet these were some of his agents in bribery. There are few instances, in comparison of the whole number of bribes, but there are some, where two men are in the secret of the same bribe. Nay, it appears that there was one bribe divided into different payments at different times,--that one part was committed to one black secretary, another part to another black secretary. So that it is almost impossible to make up a complete body of all his bribery: you may find the scattered limbs, some here and others there; and while you are employed in picking them up, he may escape entirely in a prosecution for the whole.
The first act of his government in Bengal was the most bold and extraordinary that I believe ever entered into the head of any man,--I will say, of any tyrant. It was no more or less than a general, almost exceptless confiscation, in time of profound peace, of all the landed property in Bengal, upon most extraordinary pretences. Strange as this may appear, he did so confiscate it; he put it up to a pretended public, in reality to a private corrupt auction; and such favored landholders as came to it were obliged to consider themselves as not any longer proprietors of the estates, but to recognize themselves as farmers under government: and even those few that were permitted to remain on their estates had their payments raised at his arbitrary discretion; and the rest of the lands were given to farmers-general, appointed by him and his committee, at a price fixed by the same arbitrary discretion.
It is necessary to inform your Lordships that the revenues of Bengal 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