RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN

AGAINST WARREN HASTINGS

[Richard Brinsley Sheridan, a dramatist and public man, distin. guished for his wit and eloquence, was born in Dublin in 1751. He received a good but unsystematic education and took to literature, writing "The Rivals," a brilliant comedy, before he was twenty-five. He produced other plays, including "The School for Scandal," and gained a large income from an interest he acquired in Drury Lane Theater. He entered Parliament in 1780, earning unprecedented applause by his speeches, especially by one in which he urged the impeachment of Warren Hastings. He remained a member of the House of Commons, with slight intermission, until 1812. He advocated freedom of the press, reform, and milder game laws. He opposed the legislative union of England and Ireland and indorsed the French Revolution. His death occurred at London in 1816, and his burial took place in the great Abbey of Westminster. His famous impeachment of Warren Hastings for so-called infamous actions in India was delivered in Westminster Hall (the "Hall of Rufus "), adjoining the English Houses of Parliament, in 1788, during Hastings's historic trial.]

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F, my lords, a stranger had at this time entered the province of Oude, ignorant of what had happened since the death of Sujah Dowlah-that prince who with a savage heart had still great lines of character, and who, with all his ferocity in war, had, with a cultivating hand, preserved to his country the wealth which it derived from benignant skies and a prolific soil-if, observing the wide and general devastation of fields unclothed and brown; of vegetation burned up and extinguished; of villages depopulated and in ruin; of temples unroofed and perishing; of reservoirs broken down and dry, this stranger should ask, "what has thus laid waste this beautiful and opulent land; what monstrous madness has ravaged with wide-spread war; what desolating foreign foe; what civil discords; what disputed succession; what religious zeal; what fabled monster has stalked abroad, and, with malice and mortal enmity to man, withered by the grasp of death every growth of nature and

humanity, all means of delight, and each original, simple principle of bare existence?" the answer would have been, not one of these causes! No wars have ravaged these lands and depopulated these villages! No desolating foreign foe! No domestic broils! No disputed succession! No religious, superserviceable zeal! No poisonous monster! No affliction of Providence, which, while it scourged us, cut off the sources of resuscitation! No! This damp of death is the mere effusion of British amity! We sink under the pressure of their support! We writhe under their perfidious gripe! They have embraced us with their protecting arms, and lo! these are the fruits of their alliance!

What then, my lords, shall we bear to be told that, under such circumstances, the exasperated feelings of a whole people, thus spurred on to clamor and resistance, were excited by the poor and feeble influence of the Begums? After hearing the description given by an eyewitness [Colonel Naylor, successor of Hannay] of the paroxysm of fever and delirium into which despair threw the natives when on the banks of the polluted Ganges, panting for breath, they tore more widely open the lips of their gaping wounds, to accelerate their dissolution; and while their blood was issuing, presented their ghastly eyes to heaven, breathing their last and fervent prayer that the dry earth might not be suffered to drink their blood, but that it might rise up to the throne of God, and rouse the eternal Providence to avenge the wrongs of their country-will it be said that all this was brought about by the incantations of these Begums in their secluded Zenana; or that they could inspire this enthusiasm and this despair into the breasts of a people who felt no grievance, and had suffered no torture? What motive, then, could have such influence in their bosom? What motive! That which nature, the common parent, plants in the bosom of man; and which, though it may be less active in the Indian than in the Englishman, is still congenial with, and makes a part of, his being. That feeling which tells him that man was never made to be the property of man; but that, when in the pride and insolence of power, one human creature dares to tyrannize over another, it is a power usurped, and resistance is a duty. That principle which tells him that resistance to power

usurped is not merely a duty which he owes to himself and to his neighbor, but a duty which he owes to his God, in asserting and maintaining the rank which he gave him in his creation. That principle which neither the rudeness of ignorance can stifle, nor the enervation of refinement extinguish! That principle which makes it base for a man to suffer when he ought to act; which, tending to preserve to the species the original designations of Providence, spurns at the arrogant distinctions of man, and indicates the independent quality of his race.

I trust, now, that your lordships can feel no hesitation. in acquitting the unfortunate princesses of this allegation. But though the innocence of the Begums may be confessed, it does not necessarily follow, I am ready to allow, that the prisoner must be guilty. There is a possibility that he might have been deluded by others, and incautiously led into a false conclusion. If this be proved, my lords, I will cheerfully abandon the present charge. But if, on the other hand, it shall appear, as I am confident it will, that in his subsequent conduct there was a mysterious concealment denoting conscious guilt; if all his narrations of the business be found marked with inconsistency and contradiction, there can be, I think, a doubt no longer entertained of his criminality.

It will be easy, my lords, to prove that such concealment was actually practised. From the month of September, in which the seizure of the treasures took place, till the succeeding January, no intimation whatever was given of it by Mr. Hastings to the council at Calcutta. But, my lords, look at the mode in which this concealment is attempted to be evaded. The first pretext is, the want of leisure! Contemptible falsehood! He could amuse his fancy at this juncture with the composition of Eastern tales, but to give an account of a rebellion which convulsed an empire, or of his acquiring so large an amount of treasure, he had no time!

The second pretext is, that all communication between Calcutta and Fyzabad was cut off. This is no less untrue. By comparing dates, it will be seen that letters, now in our possession, passed at this period between Mr. Middleton and the prisoner. Even Sir Elijah Impey has unguardedly

declared that the road leading from the one city to the other was as clear from interruption as that between London and any of the neighboring villages. So satisfied am I, indeed, on this point, that I am willing to lay aside every other topic of criminality against the prisoner, and to rest this prosecution alone on the question of the validity of the reasons assigned for the concealment we have alleged. Let those, my lords, who still retain any doubts on the subject, turn to the prisoner's narrative of his journey to Benares. They will there detect, amid a motley mixture of cant and mystery, of rhapsody and enigma, the most studious concealment.

It may, perhaps, be asked why did Mr. Hastings use all these efforts to veil this business? Though it is not strictly incumbent on me to give an answer to the question, yet I will say that he had obviously a reason for it. Looking to the natural effect of deep injuries on the human mind, he thought that oppression must beget resistance. The attempt which the Begums might be driven to make in their own defense, though really the effect, he was determined to represent as the cause of his proceedings. He was here only repeating the experiment which he so successfully performed in the case of Cheyte Sing. Even when disappointed in those views by the natural meekness and submission of the princesses, he could not relinquish the scheme; and hence, in his letter to the court of Directors January 5, 1782, he represents the subsequent disturbances in Oude as the cause of the violent measures he had adopted two months previous to the existence of these disturbances! He there congratulates his masters on the seizure of the treasures which he declares, by the law of Mohammed, were the property of Asaph-ul-Dowlah.

My lords, the prisoner more than once assured the House of Commons that the inhabitants of Asia believed him to be a preternatural being, gifted with good fortune or the peculiar favorite of Heaven; and that Providence never failed to take up and carry, by wise, but hidden means, every project of his to its destined end. Thus, in his blasphemous and vulgar puritanical jargon, did Mr. Hastings libel the course of Providence. Thus, according to him, when his corruptions and briberies were on the eve

of exposure, Providence inspired the heart of Nuncomar to commit a low, base crime, in order to save him from ruin. Thus, also, in his attempts on Cheyte Sing, and his plunder of the Begums, Providence stepped forth, and inspired the one with resistance and the other with rebellion, to forward his purposes! Thus, my lords, did he arrogantly represent himself as a man not only the favorite of Providence, but as one for whose sake Providence departed from the eternal course of its own wise dispensations, to assist his administration by the elaboration of all that is deleterious and ill; heaven-born forgeries-inspired treasons-providential rebellions! arraigning that Providence

"Whose works are goodness, and whose ways are right."

It does undoubtedly, my lords, bear a strange appearance, that a man of reputed ability, like the prisoner, even when acting wrongly, should have recourse to so many bungling artifices, and spread so thin a veil over his deceptions. But those who are really surprised at this circumstance must have attended very little to the demeanor of Mr. Hastings. Through the whole of his defense upon this charge, sensible that truth would undo him, he rests his hopes on falsehood. Observing this rule, he has drawn together a set of falsehoods without consistency and without connection; not knowing, or not remembering, that there is nothing which requires so much care in the fabrication as a system of lies. The series must be regular and unbroken; but his falsehoods are eternally at variance, and demolish one another. Indeed, in all his conduct, he seems to be actuated but by one principle: to do things contrary to the established form. This architect militates against the first principles of the art. He begins with the frieze and the capital, and lays the base of the column at the top. Thus turning his edifice upside down, he plumes himself upon the novelty of his idea, till it comes tumbling about his ears. Rising from these ruins, he is soon found rearing a similar structure. He delights in difficulties, and disdains a plain and secure foundation. He loves, on the contrary, to build on a precipice, and to encamp on a mine. Inured to falls, he fears not danger. Frequent defeats have given him a hardihood, without impressing a sense of disgrace,