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it is only a deputation of individuals. When the Tartars entered into China, when the Arabs and Tartars successively entered into Indostan, when the Goths and Vandals penetrated into Europe, when the Normans forced their way into England; indeed, in all conquests, migrations, settlements, and colonizations, the new people came as the offset of a nation. The company in India does not exist as a national colony. In effect and substance, nobody can go thither, that does not go in its service. The English in India are nothing but a seminary for the succession of officers. They are a nation of placemen ;-they are a commonwealth without a people ;—they are a state made up wholly of magistrates. There is nothing to be, in propriety, called people, to watch, to inspect, to balance against the power of office. The power of office, so far as the English nation is concerned, is the sole power in the country. The consequence of which is, that, being a kingdom of magistrates, what is commonly called the esprit du corps is strong in it. This spirit of the body predominates equally in all its parts; by which the members must consider themselves as having a common interest, and that common interest separated both from that of the country, which sent them out, and from that of the country in which they act. No controul upon them exists; none, I mean, in persons, who understand their language, who understand their manners, or can apply their conduct to the laws. Therefore, in a body so constituted confederacy is easy, and has been general. Your lordships are not to expect, that that should happen in such a body, which never happened in any body or corporation; that is, that they should, in any instance, be a proper check and controul upon themselves. It is not in the nature of things. The fundamental principle of the whole of the East-India Company's system is monopoly in some sense or other. The same principle predominates in the service abroad, and the service at home; and both systems are united into one, animated with the same spirit, that is, with the corporate spirit. The whole, taken together, is such, as has not been seen in the examples of the Moors, the Portuguese, the Spaniards, the Romans; in no old, in no recent examples. The Dutch

may resemble it, but they have not an empire properly so denominated. By means of this peculiar circumstance it has not been difficult for Mr. Hastings to embody abuse, and to put himself at the head of a regular system of corruption. Another circumstance in that service is deserving of notice. Except in the highest parts of all, the emoluments of office do not in any degree correspond with the trust, nor the nature of the office with its name. In other official systems the style, in general, is above the function; here it is the reverse. Under the name of junior merchant, senior merchant, writer, and other petty appellations of the counting-house, you have magistrates of high dignity, you have administrators of revenues truly royal ;—you have judges civil, and in some respects criminal, who pass judgment upon the greatest properties of a great country. The legal publick emoluments, that belong to them, are very often so inadequate to the real dignity of the character, that it is impossible, almost absolutely impossible, for the subordinate parts of it, which, though subordinate, are stations of power, to exist, as Englishmen, who look at a fortune to be enjoyed at home as their ultimate object, and to exist in a state of perfect incorruption in that service.

In some parts of Europe, it is true, that the greatest situations are often attended with but little emolument; yet still they are filled. Why? Because reputation, glory, fame, the esteem, the love, the tears of joy, which flow from happy sensibility, the honest applauses of a grateful country, sometimes pay the cares, anxieties and toils, which wait on great situations in the commonwealth and in these, they pay in money what cannot be paid in fame and reputation. It is the reverse in the service of the India company. Glory is not the lot of subordinated merit; and all the subordinate parts of the gradation are officers, who, in comparison with the offices and duties entrusted with them, are miserably provided for; whereas the chief of each great presidency has emoluments securing him against every mode of temptation. But if this has not secured the head, we may easily judge how the members are to be coerced. Mr. Hastings, at the head of the service, with high legal emoluments, has

fouled his hands and sullied his government with bribes. He has substituted oppression and tyranny in the place of legal government. With all that unbounded, licentious power, which he has assumed over the publick revenues, instead of endeavouring to find a series of gradual, progressive, honourable, and adequate rewards for the persons, who serve the publick in the subordinate but powerful situations, he has left them to prey upon the people without the smallest degree of controul. In default of honest emolument, there is the unbounded license of power; and (as one of the honestest and ablest servants of the company said to me in conversation) the civil service of the company resembled the military service of the Mahrattas, little pay, but unbounded license to plunder. I do not say, that some of the salaries given in India would not sound well here but when you consider the nature of the trusts, the dignity of the situation, whatever the name of them may be, the powers, that are granted, the hopes, that every man has of establishing himself at home; I repeat, it is a source of infinite grievance-of infinite abuse of which source of corrupt power we charge Mr. Hastings with having availed himself, in filling up the void of direct pay by finding out and countenancing every kind of oblique and unjust emolument: though it must be confessed, that he is far from being solely guilty of this offence.

Another circumstance, which distinguishes the East-India Company, is the youth of the persons, who are employed in the system of that service. The servants have almost universally been sent out to begin their progress and career in active occupation, and in the exercise of high authority, at that period of life, which, in all other places, has been employed in the course of a rigid education. To put the matter in a few words, they are transferred from slippery youth to perilous independence, from perilous independence to inordinate expectations, from inordinate expectations to boundless power. School-boys without tutors, minors without guardians, the world is let loose upon them with all its temptations; and they are let loose upon the world with all the powers, that despotism involves.

It is further remarkable, these servants exercise, what your lordships are now exercising, high judicial powers; and they exercise them without the smallest study of any law, either general or municipal. It is made a sort of rule in the service, a rule confirmed even by the attempts, that were made to correct it, (I mean, confirmed by Sir Elijah Impey, when, under the auspices of Mr. Hastings, he undertook to be legislator for India) that the judicial character, the last in the order of legal progress, that, to which all professional men look up as the crown of their labours, that ultimate hope of men grown grey in professional practice, is among the first experimental situations of a company's servant. It is expressly said in that body of regulations, to which I allude, that the office and situation of a judge of the dewanny courts of adawlet is to be filled by the junior servants of the company; and, as the judicial emolument is not substantially equal to that of other situations, the office of a judge is to be taken, as it were in transitu, as a passage to other offices not of a judicial nature. As soon, therefore, as a young man has supplied the defects of his education by the advantage of some experience, he is immediately translated to a totally different office; and another young man is substituted to learn, at the expense of the property of India, to fill a situation, which, when he may be qualified to all, he is no longer to hold.

It is in a great measure the same with regard to the other situations. They are the situations of great statesmen, which, according to the practice of the world, require, to fill properly, rather a large converse with men and much intercourse in life, than deep study of books; though that, too, has its eminent service. We know, that in the habits of civilized life, in cultivated society, there is imbibed by men a good deal of the solid practice of government, of the true maxims of state, and every thing, that enables a man to serve his country. But these men are sent over to exercise functions, at which a statesman here would tremble, without any theoretical study, and without any of that sort of experience, which, in mixed societies of business and converse, form men gradually and insensibly to great affairs. Low cunning, intrigue and

stratagem, are soon acquired; but manly, durable policy, which never sacrifices the general interest to a partial or momentary advantage, is not so cheaply formed in the human understanding.

Mr. Hastings, in his defence before the House of Commons, and in the defences he has made before your lordships, has lamented his own situation in this particular. It was much to be lamented indeed. How far it will furnish justification, extenuation, or palliation of his conduct, when we come to examine that conduct, will be seen.

These circumstances in the system have, in a great degree, vitiated and perverted what is in reality, and many things are in reality, excellent in it. They have rendered the application of all correctives and remedies to abuse, at best, precarious in their operation. The laws, that we have made, the covenants, which the company has obliged its servants to enter into, the occasional orders that have been given, at least ostensibly good, all have proved noxious to the country, instead of beneficial. To illustrate this point, I beg leave to observe to your lordships, that the servants of the company are obliged to enter into that service, not only with an impression of the general duty, which attaches upon all servants, but are obliged to engage, in a specifick covenant with their masters, to perform all the duties described in that covenant (which are all the duties of their relation) under heavy penalties. They are bound to a repetition of these covenants at every step of their progress, from writer to factor, from factor to junior merchant, and from junior merchant to senior merchant. They ought, according to the rule, to renew these covenants at these times by something, (I speak without offence) which may be said to resemble confirmation in the church. They are obliged to renew their obligation in particular to receive no gifts, gratuities, or presents whatsoever.

This scheme of covenants would have been wise and proper, if it had belonged to a judicious order and rational consistent scheme of discipline. The orders of the company have forbidden their servants to take any extraneous emoluments. The act of parliament has fulminated against them. Clear positive laws, and clear positive private engagements,

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