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

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 indeed not hid very deep, not above one between him and the farmer, namely, his banian directly, or some other black person to represent him. But some have so managed the affair, that, when you inquire who the farmer is,--Was such a one farmer? No. Cantoo Baboo? No. Another? No,--at