The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 09 (of 12). Edmund Burke
at a higher rate than had ever been received before, and with a progressive and accumulating increase on each of the four last years of the said settlement.
That, notwithstanding the right of property and inheritance, repeatedly acknowledged by the said Warren Hastings to be in the zemindars and other native landholders, and notwithstanding he had declared "that the security of private property is the greatest encouragement to industry, on which the wealth of every state depends," the said Warren Hastings, nevertheless, in direct violation of those acknowledged rights and principles, did universally let the lands of Bengal in farm for five years,—thereby destroying all the rights of private property of the zemindars,—thereby delivering the management of their estates to farmers, and transferring by a most arbitrary and unjust act of power the whole landed property of Bengal from the owners to strangers. That, to accomplish this iniquitous purpose, he, the said Warren Hastings, did put the lands of Bengal up to a pretended public auction, and invited all persons to make proposals for farming the same, thereby encouraging strangers to bid against the proprietors,—in consequence of which, not only the said proprietors were ousted of the possession and management of their estates, but a great part of the lands fell into the hands of the banians, or principal black servants of British subjects connected with and protected by the government; and that the said Warren Hastings himself has since declared, that by this way the lands too generally fell into the hands of desperate or knavish adventurers.6 That, before the measure hereinbefore described was carried into execution, the said Warren Hastings did establish certain fundamental regulations in Council, to be observed in executing the same.7 That among these regulations it was specially and strictly ordered, that no farm should exceed the annual amount of one lac of rupees, and "that no peshcar, banian, or other servant, of whatever denomination, of the collector, or relation or dependant of any such servant, should be allowed to farm lands, nor directly or indirectly to hold a concern in any farm, nor to be security for any farmer." That, in direct violation of these his own regulations, and in breach of the public trust reposed in him, and sufficiently declared by the manifest duty of his station, if it had not been expressed and enforced by any positive institution, he, the said Warren Hastings, did permit and suffer his own banian or principal black steward, named Cantoo Baboo, to hold farms in different purgunnahs, or districts, or to be security for farms, to the amount of thirteen lac of rupees (130,000l. or upwards) per annum; and that, after enjoying the whole of those farms for two years, he was permitted by the said Warren Hastings to relinquish two of them. That on the subject of the farms held by Cantoo Baboo the said Warren Hastings has made the following declaration. "Many of his farms were taken without my knowledge, and almost all against my advice. I had no right to use compulsion or authority; nor could I with justice exclude him, because he was my servant, from a liberty allowed to all other persons in the country. The farms which he quitted he quitted by my advice, because I thought that he might engage himself beyond his abilities, and be involved in disputes, which I did not choose to have come before me as judge of them."8 That the said declaration contains sundry false and contradictory assertions: that, if almost all the said farms were taken against his advice, it cannot be true that many of them were taken without his knowledge; that, whether Cantoo Baboo had been his servant or not, the said Warren Hastings was bound by his own regulations to prevent his holding any farms to a greater amount than one lac of rupees per annum, and that the said Cantoo Baboo, being the servant of the Governor-General, was excluded by the said regulations from holding any farms whatever; that, if (as the Directors observe) it was thought dangerous to permit the banian of a collector to be concerned in farms, the same or stronger objections would always lie against the Governor's banian being so concerned; that the said Warren Hastings had a right, and was bound by his duty, to prevent his servant from holding the same; that, in advising the said Cantoo Baboo to relinquish some of the said farms, for which he was actually engaged, he has acknowledged an influence over his servant, and has used that influence for a purpose inconsistent with his duty to the India Company, namely, to deprive them of the security of the said Cantoo Baboo's engagement for farms which on trial he had found not beneficial, or not likely to continue beneficial, to himself; and that, if it was improper that he, the said Warren Hastings, should be the judge of any disputes in which his servant might be involved on account of his farms, that reason ought to have obliged him to prevent his servant from being engaged in any farms whatever, or to have advised his said servant to relinquish the remainder of his farms, as well as those which the said Warren Hastings affirms he quitted by his advice. That on the subject of the said charge the Court of Directors of the East India Company have come to the following resolution: "Resolved, That it appears that the conduct of the late President and Council of Fort William in Bengal, in suffering Cantoo Baboo, the present Governor-General's banian, to hold farms in different purgunnahs to a large amount, or to be security for such farms, contrary to the tenor and spirit of the 17th regulation of the Committee of Revenue at Fort William, of the 14th May, 1772, and afterwards relinquishing that security without satisfaction made to the Company, was highly improper, and has been attended with considerable loss to the Company"; and that in the whole of this transaction the said Warren Hastings has been guilty of gross collusion with his servant, and manifest breach of trust to his employers.
That, whereas it was acknowledged by the said Warren Hastings, that the country, in the years 1770 and 1771, had suffered great depopulation and decay, and that the collections of those years, having been violently kept up to their former standard, had added to the distress of the country, the settlement of the revenues made by him for five years, commencing the 1st May, 1772, instead of offering any abatement or relief to the inhabitants who had survived the famine, held out to the East India Company a promise of great increase of revenue, to be exacted from the country by the means hereinbefore described. That this settlement was not realized, but fell considerably short, even in the first of the five years, when the demand was the lightest; and that on the whole of the five years the real collections fell short of the settlement to the enormous amount of two millions and a half sterling, and upwards. That such a settlement, if it had been or could have been rigorously exacted from a country already so distressed, and from a population so impaired, that, in the belief of the said Warren Hastings, it was impossible such loss could be recruited in four or five years, would have been in fact, what it appeared to be in form, an act of the most cruel and tyrannical oppression; but that the real use made of that unjust demand upon the natives of Bengal was, to oblige them to compound privately with the persons who formed the settlement, and who threatened to enforce it. That the enormous balances and remissions on that settlement arose from a general collusion between the farmers and collectors, and from a general peculation and embezzlement of the revenues, by which the East India Company was grossly imposed on, in the first instance, by a promised increase of revenue, and defrauded, in the second, not only by the failure of that increase, but by the revenues falling short of what they were in the two years preceding the said settlement to a great amount. That the said Warren Hastings, being then at the head of the government of Bengal, was a party to all the said imposition, fraud, peculation, and embezzlement, and is principally and specially answerable for the same; and that, whereas sundry proofs of the said peculation and embezzlement were brought before the Court of Directors, the said Directors (in a letter dated the 4th of March, 1778, and signed by William Devaynes and Nathaniel Smith, Esquires, now Chairman and Deputy-Chairman of the said Court, and members of this House) did declare, that, "although it was rather their wish to prevent future evils than to enter into a severe retrospection of past abuses, yet, as in some of the cases then before them they conceived there had been flagrant corruption, and in others great oppressions committed on the native inhabitants, they thought it unjust to suffer the delinquents to pass wholly unpunished, and therefore they directed the Governor-General and Council forthwith to commence a prosecution against the persons who composed the Committee of Circuit, and their representatives, and against all other proper parties"; but that the prosecutions so ordered by the Court of Directors in the year 1778 have never been brought to trial; and that the said Warren Hastings did, on the 23d of December, 1783, propose and carry it in Council, that orders should be given for withdrawing the said prosecutions,—declaring, that he was clearly of opinion that there was no ground to maintain them, and that they would only be productive of expense to the Company
Revenue Consultation, 28th January, 1775.
Revenue Board, 14th May, 1772.
Address to the Court of Directors, 25th March, 1775.