THE ENGLISH IN INDIA, CONTINUED.—TREATMENT OF THE NATIVES, CONTINUED.
“If,” says the same historian, in whose language we concluded the last chapter, “to this picture of public oppressions we were to add that of private extortions, we should find the agents of the Company almost everywhere exacting their tribute with extreme rigour, and raising contributions with the utmost cruelty. We should see them carrying a kind of inquisition into every family, and sitting in judgment on every fortune; robbing indiscriminately the artizan and the labourer; imputing it often to a man, as a crime, that he is not sufficiently rich, and punishing him accordingly. We should view them selling their favour and their credit, as well to oppress the innocent as to oppress the guilty. We should find, in consequence of these irregularities, despair seizing every heart, and an universal dejection getting the better of every mind, and uniting to put a stop to the progress and activity of commerce, agriculture, and population.” This, which is the language of a foreigner, was also the language of the Directors at the same period, addressed to their servants in India. They complained that their “orders had been disregarded; that oppression pervaded the whole country; that youths had been suffered with impunity to exercise sovereign jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes by monopolizing commerce.” They ask “whether there be a thing which had not been made a monopoly of? whether the natives are not more than ever oppressed and wretched?” They were just then appointing Mr. Hastings their first Governor-general, and expressed a hope that he would “set an example of temperance, economy, and application.” Unfortunately Mr. Hastings set an example of a very different kind. It was almost immediately after his appointment to his high station that he entered into that infamous bargain with the Nabob of Oude for the extermination of the Rohillas; and during his government scarcely a year passed without the most serious charges being preferred against him to the supreme council, of which he himself was the head, of his reception of presents and annuities contrary to the express injunctions of the Company, and for the purpose of corrupt appointments. In 1775 he was charged with the receipt of 15,000 rupees, as a bribe for the appointment of the Duan of Burdwan, or manager of the revenues; in 1776, of receiving an annual salary from the Phousdar of Hoogly of 36,000 rupees for a similar cause. About the same time it came out too, that in 1772, that is, immediately on entering the governorship, he received from the Munny Begum a present of one lac and a half of rupees, for appointing her the guardian and superintendent of the affairs of the Nabob of Bengal, a minor; and the same sum had been received by Mr. Middleton, his agent. The council felt itself bound to receive evidence on these charges. The Maha Rajah Nundcomar, who had been appointed to various important offices by Mr. Hastings himself, came forward and accused the governor of acquitting Mahmud Reza Khan, the Naib Duan of Bengal, and Rajah Shitabroy the Naib Duan of Bahar, of vast embezzlements in their accounts, and also offered proof of the bribe of upwards of three and a half lacs from Munny Begum and Rajah Gourdass. What answer did he make to these charges? He refused to enter into them; but immediately commenced a prosecution of Nundcomar, on a charge of conspiracy; which failing, he had him tried on a charge of forgery, said to be committed five years before. On this he was convicted by a jury of Englishmen, and hanged, though the crime was not capital by the laws of his country. This was a circumstance that cast the foulest suspicions upon him. It was said that a man standing in the position and peculiar circumstances of the governor, accused of the high crimes of bribery and corruption, would, had he been innocent, have used every exertion to have saved the life of an accuser, had he been prosecuted by others, instead of himself hastening him out of the way; which must leave the irresistible conviction in the public mind, of his own guilt. But on the celebrated trial of Mr. Hastings, this was exactly the mode in which every accusation was met. When the most celebrated men of the time had united to reiterate these and other charges; when he stood before the House of Peers, impeached by the Commons, instead of standing forward as a man conscious of his innocence, and glad of the opportunity to clear his name from such foul taint, every technical obstruction which the ingenuity of his council could devise was thrown in the way of evidence.