The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 03 (of 12). Edmund Burke
of attention. It is that of the renter of the Province of Nellore.]
It is, with a wantonness of falsehood, and indifference to detection, asserted to you, in proof of the validity of the Nabob's objections, that this man's failures had already forced us to remove him: though in fact he has continued invariably in office; though our greatest supplies have been received from him; and that, in the disappointment of your remittances [the remittances from Bengal] and of other resources, the specie sent us from Nellore alone has sometimes enabled us to carry on the public business; and that the present expedition against the French must, without this assistance from the assignment, have been laid aside, or delayed until it might have become too late.
[This man is by the ministry given over to the mercy of persons capable of making charges on him "with a wantonness of falsehood, and indifference to detection." What is likely to happen to him and the rest of the victims may appear by the following.]
Letter to the Governor-General and Council, March 13th, 1782.
The speedy termination, to which the people were taught to look, of the Company's interference in the revenues, and the vengeance denounced against those who, contrary to the mandate of the Durbar, should be connected with them, as reported by Mr. Sullivan, may, as much as the former exactions and oppressions of the Nabob in the revenue, as reported by the commander-in-chief, have deterred some of the fittest men from offering to be concerned in it.
The timid disposition of the Hindoo natives of this country was not likely to be insensible to the specimen of that vengeance given by his Excellency the Amir, who, upon the mere rumor, that a Bramin, of the name of Appagee Row, had given proposals to the Company for the rentership of Vellore, had the temerity to send for him, and to put him in confinement.
A man thus seized by the Nabob's sepoys within the walls of Madras gave a general alarm, and government found it necessary to promise the protection of the Company, in order to calm the apprehensions of the people.
No. 6.
Referred to from pp. 101 and 105 .
Extract of a Letter from the Council and Select Committee at Fort St. George, to the Governor-General and Council, dated 25th May, 1783.
In the prosecution of our duty, we beseech you to consider, as an act of strict and necessary justice, previous to reiteration of your orders for the surrender of the assignment, how far it would be likely to affect third persons who do not appear to have committed any breach of their engagements. You command us to compel our aumils to deliver over their respective charges as shall be appointed by the Nabob, or to retain their trust under his sole authority, if he shall choose to confirm them. These aumils are really renters; they were appointed in the room of the Nabob's aumils, and contrary to his wishes; they have already been rejected by him, and are therefore not likely to be confirmed by him. They applied to this government, in consequence of public advertisements in our name, as possessing in this instance the joint authority of the Nabob and the Company, and have entered into mutual and strict covenants with us, and we with them, relative to the certain districts not actually in the possession of the enemy; by which covenants, as they are bound to the punctual payment of their rents and due management of the country, so we, and our constituents, and the public faith, are in like manner bound to maintain them in the enjoyment of their leases, during the continuance of the term. That term was for five years, agreeably to the words of the assignment, which declare that the time of renting shall be for three or five years, as the Governor shall settle with the renters.—Their leases cannot be legally torn from them. Nothing but their previous breach of a part could justify our breach of the whole. Such a stretch and abuse of power would, indeed, not only savor of the assumption of sovereignty, but of arbitrary and oppressive despotism. In the present contest, whether the Nabob be guilty, or we be guilty, the renters are not guilty. Whichever of the contending parties has broken the condition of the assignment, the renters have not broken the condition of their leases. These men, in conducting the business of the assignment, have acted in opposition to the designs of the Nabob, in despite of the menaces denounced against all who should dare to oppose the mandates of the Durbar justice. Gratitude and humanity require that provision should be made by you, before you set the Nabob's ministers loose on the country, for the protection of the victims devoted to their vengeance.
Mr. Benfield, to secure the permanency of his power, and the perfection of his schemes, thought it necessary to render the Nabob an absolute stranger to the state of his affairs. He assured his Highness that full justice was not done to the strength of his sentiments and the keenness of his attacks, in the translations that were made by the Company's servants from the original Persian of his letters. He therefore proposed to him that they should for the future be transmitted in English.—Of the English language or writing his Highness or the Amir cannot read one word, though the latter can converse in it with sufficient fluency. The Persian language, as the language of the Mahomedan conquerors, and of the court of Delhi, as an appendage or signal of authority, was at all times particularly affected by the Nabob. It is the language of all acts of state, and all public transactions, among the Mussulman chiefs of Hindostan. The Nabob thought to have gained no inconsiderable point, in procuring the correspondence from our predecessors to the Rajah of Tanjore to be changed from the Mahratta language, which that Hindoo prince understands, to the Persian, which he disclaims understanding. To force the Rajah to the Nabob's language was gratifying the latter with a new species of subserviency. He had formerly contended with considerable anxiety, and, it was thought, no inconsiderable cost, for particular forms of address to be used towards him in that language. But all of a sudden, in favor of Mr. Benfield, he quits his former affections, his habits, his knowledge, his curiosity, the increasing mistrust of age, to throw himself upon the generous candor, the faithful interpretation, the grateful return, and eloquent organ of Mr. Benfield!—Mr. Benfield relates and reads what he pleases to his Excellency the Amir-ul-Omrah; his Excellency communicates with the Nabob, his father, in the language the latter understands. Through two channels so pure, the truth must arrive at the Nabob in perfect refinement; through this double trust, his Highness receives whatever impression it may be convenient to make on him: he abandons his signature to whatever paper they tell him contains, in the English language, the sentiments with which they had inspired him. He thus is surrounded on every side. He is totally at their mercy, to believe what is not true, and to subscribe to what he does not mean. There is no system so new, so foreign to his intentions, that they may not pursue in his name, without possibility of detection: for they are cautious of who approach him, and have thought prudent to decline, for him, the visits of the Governor, even upon the usual solemn and acceptable occasion of delivering to his Highness the Company's letters. Such is the complete ascendency gained by Mr. Benfield. It may be partly explained by the facts observed already, some years ago, by Mr. Benfield himself, in regard to the Nabob, of the infirmities natural to his advanced age, joined to the decays of his constitution. To this ascendency, in proportion as it grew, must chiefly be ascribed, if not the origin, at least the continuance and increase, of the Nabob's disunion with this Presidency: a disunion which creates the importance and subserves the resentments of Mr. Benfield; and an ascendency which, if you effect the surrender of the assignment, will entirely leave the exercise of power and accumulation of fortune at his boundless discretion: to him, and to the Amir-ul-Omrah, and to Seyd Assam Cawn, the assignment would in fact be surrendered. HE WILL (IF ANY) BE THE SOUCAR SECURITY; and security in this country is counter-secured by possession. You would not choose to take the assignment from the Company, to give it to individuals. Of the impropriety of its returning to the Nabob, Mr. Benfield would now again argue from his former observations, that, under his Highness's management, his country declined, his people emigrated, his revenues decreased, and his country was rapidly approaching to a state of political insolvency. Of Seyd Assam Cawn we judge only from the observations this letter already contains. But of the other two persons [Amir-ul-Omrah and Mr. Benfield] we undertake to declare, not as parties in a cause, or even as voluntary witnesses, but as executive officers, reporting to you, in the discharge of our duty, and under the impression of the sacred obligation which binds us to truth, as well as to justice, that, from every observation of their principles and