this fame moment, Chimnagee Boofla, the son of Moodagee, was at the head of a Mahratta army at Cuttack, which had marched for the avowed purpose of invading Bengal. This ftorm Mr. Haftings averted by the payment of fixteen lacks of rupees, and by fo doing he withdrew Moodagee from the confederacy. He fecured the unmolested march of Colonel Pearce at the head of ten battalions of fepoys, who joined Sir Eyre Coote before the fecond action with Hyder, and he effectually broke the confederacy that had been formed against us-a fervice for which he was condemned in the year 1782 by a refolution of this Houfe, but which every rational man now speaks of with the fame applause that an honourable and learned gentleman (Mr. Anftruther) fpoke of it in October, 1782, at a General Court. All the money that could be borrowed upon bond was borrowed previous to Mr. Haftings' departure from Calcutta in July, 1781, when he proceeded to Benares. Our funds were gone, but the public neceffities daily increased. I beg leave to mention a very fingular circumftance, in order to prove the diftrefs to which we were reduced-Our army in Bengal was confiderably in arrears. Our investment was kept up by loans; and in the month of November, 1781, when it was abfolutely neceffary to fend a confiderable fupply of money to Sir Eyre Coote, the Council in Calcutta, Mr. Wheler and Mr. Macpherfon, could not compléte the fum from the public treasury, but upon the credit of a principal native in Calcutta, borrowed five lacks of rupees, which was repaid from the first collections. In Oude the army was fix months in arrears. The brigade at Cawnpore was very confiderably in arrears, fo was Colonel Muir's army in the Mahratta country, and vaft fupplies were required at Madras and Bombay. Mr. Haftings knew that Mr. Suffrein would be upon the coaft early in 1782, and without the most strenuous exertions, India was loft for ever to Great Britain. Important as was the peace with Madagee Sindia, at the time it took place, I affirm that thofe know nothing of India who affert, that that event alone deprived Mr. Haftings of the plea of neceffity for the ftrong measure he adopted, if that had been his plea;-but whether the feizure of fifty-fivelacks of rupees was justifiable on the ground Mr. Haftings acted, or whether it was juftifiable on the plea of neceffity, or whether it is not to be defended on either ground; of this I am certain, and every man who knows any thing of India thinks with me, that fifty-five lacks of rupees were not to be procured by any other means, and that without fuch a feafonable fupply we might at this moment be debating how Mr. Haftings fhould be impeached for lofing India. Let me again remind the Committee of a former fpeech of the right VOL. XXI. $ honou honourable gentleman's (Mr. Dundas), That God knew how Mr. Haftings managed, but he did manage fomehow or other to raise money, and without money the empire in India must have been loft. Gentlemen fhould confider that we cannot do in India as a Minifter does in Great Britain. We cannot borrow a hundred millions upon the ftrength of taxes, which are to be a clog upon our remoteft pofterity. Our empire in India muft be preferved by the exertions of the moment, proportioned to the danger of the moinent; and the honourable gentleman, as he advances in Oriental knowledge, will difcover, that the man who fhrinks from refponfibility will lofe a diftant empire. Probably it will never happen to me to be upon fervice, or in a command of any confequence; but I proteft I should go out with fome degree of uneafiness, after the doctrines that have been advanced. I have ever underftood, that circumftances may arife, which would render it meritorious even to plunder a Mofque, or a Zenana. Gentlemen talk very finely in this Houfe of what Mr. Haftings ought to have done; that if the neceffity had been fo good as I have ftated, he should have got money equally from different people-But how, or from whom? The Nabob owed us a million fterling-He had neither funds, nor credit beyond a certain extent His mother was known to have more than a million, which her eunuch had ftated was a treafure accumulated for an emergency-a ftate emergency, What then is the queftion? Had her conduct been of fuch a nature as to juftify Mr. Haftings for permitting the Nabob to feize this money for the Company's ufe, when the exiftence of the British empire depended upon it? Before I fit down, permit me to fay a few words, Mr. St. John, on the patlietic manner in which the honourable gentleman has painted the diftreffes of the eunuchs Behar and Juvar Ally Cawn. I do affure that honourable gentleman, that I have feen fcenes of diftrefs in my own country far exceeding any that I have feen in India, except during the year of the dreadful famine in Bengal, in 1770: but with regard to the feverities ufed in the recovery of debts in England, if he will vifit the King's Bench, or the Fleet prifon, he will find fcenes of woe that would wring the heart of man, and far, very far, indeed, exceeding any hardfhips that were fuftained by thefe eunuchs. I allow that the cuftom of imprisoning for debt is a horrid one, if it could be avoided: but it is a notorious fact, that men of great property in India will fubmit to a confinement for months, and to every fpecies of indignity, if by fo doing they can avoid the payment of their debts. I beg pardon of the Committes for having detained them fo long. Much of the honourable gentleman's speech has escaped me: but he was almost as ingenjous, genious, though less eloquent, on a former occafion; I mean in the debate relative to the Dehli negociations. Later information must have convinced him, that all his ingenious reafoning at that time yielded to the matter of fact, which was, as I plainly stated, that Major Browne had concluded no treaty with the Mogul. The prefent question is perfectly clear, in my opinion. Mr. Haftings, acting from undoubted information, took a ftrong measure relative to the Begums, and procured in one month a payment of fifty-five lacks for the Company. Upon fuch grounds, if the House of Commons of Great Britain fhould be of a different opinion, I hope they will in their justice repay this money to the Begum, which, with the interest upon it, will amount to a million fterling, and that they will applaud Mr. Haftings for an ac which preferved India to Great Britain. I must beg leave to mention one circumftance more which has been most unfairly stated, and the most unwarrantable inference drawn from it. Mr. Haftings in September 1782 received a present of ten lacks of rupees in bills from the Nabob and his minifters, drawn upon the house of Gopaul Dofs, the first banking house in Hindoftan. Though the bills were accepted, they were flowly paid, owing to the confufion of the times, and to Gopaul Dofs, the head of the house, being then a prisoner with Cheit Sing. By the first dispatch, the Nancy, the fame veffel which carried home Mr. Haftings' Narrative, he ftates the circumftance to the Court of Directors: he applies the money to their use; and knowing that they had on former occafions rewarded their servants, he has the prefumption to ask them to confider him, and to give him this money when they can better spare it. Here is the plain matter of fact; and it has not the flighteft connection with the subsequent seizure of the Begum's treasures; nor was the money paid from the produce of those treasures: it was paid by bills drawn in September 1781, accepted at that time, paid by the banking house of Gopaul Dofs, and, in fact, as the money was received, it was carried to the Company's credit. There is but one other circumftance that I fhall mention to the Committee before I fit down. A strange stress is laid upon this point. That the Court of Directors fent an order to inquire into the guilt or innocence of the Begum at the time of Cheit Sing's rebellion, and that Mr. Haftings declined to carry that order into effect. The order arrived in Calcutta, in Auguft, when the whole Council were strongly united against Mr. Haftings. Mr. Wheler, profeffing his firm belief that the Begums had been concerned in the rebellion, from all the information which he had been able to obtain from perfons perfectly impartial-but he propofed an jaquiry. Sa Mr. Chan inquiry. There it refted, and at the end of twelve days, Mr Stables took it up. He propofed, that the Refident a Oude, and the commanding officer, fhould be ordered to in quire into the truth of the reports of their difaffection Mr. Haftings oppofed it as unneceffary, but faid, that if a inquiry was to be made, it fhould be from all perfons capabl of giving information. Mr. Macpherson also oppofed the inquiry, and profeffed his conviction that they had taken an active and a hoftile part against us during the rebellion of Chei Sing; but he propofed that a letter fhould be written to them expreffive of the favourable fentiments of the Company towards them; and Mr. Macpherson clearly stated, that the words of the Court of Director's letter, which he had conftrued to be an order, did not appear fo upon re-perufal. Mr. Haftings affigned unanfwerable reasons why it would be improper to write fuch a letter. These were, that no complaint had ever been made by the Begums; that they were then on very good terms with the Nabob, their fon, and grandfon, and that fuch an inquiry could anfwer no one good end. Mr. Macpherson gave up the point, and the Council, though all united against Mr. Haftings, dropped it. They had the power to make the inquiry; Mr. Haftings defired, if they did, that it might be from all perfons capable of giving evidence-they did not make it. There was no order from the Court of Directors to make it, according to their conftruction of the letter; and it is plain, they conftrued it right, fince neither the Court of Directors, nor the Board of Control, ever thought of fuch an inquiry, from February, 1783, to this day. But I will tell you what they have done, Mr. St. John; the Court of Directors and the Board of Control have fully approved of all Mr. Haftings did in Oude, and they have pofitively ordered, that his final arrangement with the Nabob Vizier fhould be inviolably adhered to. Mr. Chancellor Pitt remarked, that even, from the earliest cellor Pitt. period of an attempt to inveftigate the important charges now in question, he had confidered the matter in a light serious beyond defcription, moft deeply involving, not alone the honour and character of the Houfe but the integrity and reputation of the party accufed. It therefore behoved the Committtee to deliberate with the greatest temper, and not to decide in any one ftage of the bufinefs without having previously made the fulleft investigation of every fact ftated in each particular charge, and a careful comparison of the whole of the evidence adduced, with the facts charged, both in favour of the criminal at the bar, and in fupport of the ac cufation laid against him: fo that gentlemen might give their votes upon the fulleft conviction of their fulfilling their duty con confcientiously, honeftly, and juftly. He had the fatisfaction to know that this had been the line of condnet which he had purfued from the moment that the subject had been first fubmitted to the coufideration of Parliament, and as he had ever been of opinion, that the charge relative to the princeffes of Oude, was that of all others, which bore the strongest marks of criminality and cruelty, fo he had been peculiarly careful to guard against the impreffion of every fort of prejudice, to keep his mind open and fit for the reception of that which could alone fairly and confcientiously establish innocence, or bring home conviction of guilt; and in order the better to enable himself to decide with fafety, he had, with the utmost minutenefs and attention, compared the charge, article by article, with the evidence adduced at the bar in fupport of each, and with the various minutes and letters brought before the Houfe, or any where to be found within his reach happy, indeed, he declared himself, that the Committee had not obliged the debate to proceed the preceding evening; for, he made no fcruple to confefs, that he was then prepared to give his fentiments upon the charge with much greater fatisfaction to himself, than he could have done the preceding night. Confcious that he had no other view in wifhing for the adjournment, than (what every gentlemen who meant to speak on the fubject, muft have in common with himself) an anxious defire to enable himself to fatisfy his own mind by a comparison of the different fentiments he had heard that day with each other, in the first inftance, and with the opinions he had formed before, made him indifferent to thofe fuggeftions which were thrown out, as if there was fome finifter motive in his breaft which prompted him to fupport the question of adjournment. He faid, he alluded not to any thing that had fallen from a right honourable gentlemen oppofite to him, because he did not believe that any thing from him would bear fuch a conftruction; indeed he was fure if it would, the right honourable gentleman would not have declared that he meant not to throw out fuch an imputation. The charge had been brought forward in a manner altogether fo unprecedented, as far as eloquence and abilities were concerned, that it was an additional reafon for his feeling himself happy at the interval and paufe that had been afforded the Committee, fince it gave him an opportunity of coolly weighing and confidering the arguments that came with fuch irrefiftible force from the honourable gentleman who had yesterday introduced the motion, and of examining with more fcrupulous investigation, than he could poffibly have done while he was under the immediate impreffion they had made upon him and upon the Committee in general; and it was with great eafe to himself that he could now rife and declare, |