without all comparison greater; and if the corruption was supposed so extensive as to be bought off at that price where the means were fewer, the house will judge how far the tax has purchased off the evil.

ELEVENTH REPORT

From the select committee appointed to take into consi deration the state of the administration of justice in the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, and to report the same as it shall appear to them, to the house, with their observations thereupon; and who were instructed to consider how the British possessions in the East Indies may be held and governed with the greatest security and advantage to this country, and by what means the happiness of the native inhabitants may be best promoted. (1783.)

YOUR Committee, in the course of their inquiry into the obedience yielded by the company's servants to the orders of the court of directors, (the authority of which orders had been strengthened by the regulating act of 1773,) could not overlook one of the most essential objects of that act, and of those orders, namely, the taking of gifts and presents. These pretended free gifts from the natives to the company's servants in power, had never been authorized by law; they are contrary to the covenants formerly entered into by the president and council; they are strictly forbidden by the act of parliament; and forbidden upon grounds of the most substantial policy.

Before the regulating act of 1733, the allowances made by the company to the presidents of Bengal, were abundantly sufficient to guarantee them against any thing like a necessity for giving into that pernicious practice. The act of parliament which appointed a governor general in the place of a president, as it was extremely particular in enforcing the prohibition of those presents, so it was equally careful in making an ample provision for supporting the dignity of the office, in order to remove all excuse for a corrupt increase of its emoluments.

Although evidence on record, as well as verbal testimony, has appeared before your committee, of presents to a large amount having been received by Mr. Hastings and others, before the year 1775, they were not able to

find distinct traces of that practice in him, or any one else, for a few years.

The inquiry set on foot in Bengal, by order of the court of directors, in 1775, with regard to all corrupt practices, and the vigour with which they were for some time pursued, might have given a temporary check to the receipt of presents, or might have produced a more effectual concealment of them; and afterwards the calamities. which befell almost all who were concerned in the first discoveries, did probably prevent any further complaint upon the subject: but, towards the close of the last session, your committee have received much of new and alarming information concerning that abuse.

dix,

Vide

ment to

page 7.

The first traces appeared, though faintly and obscure- Appenly, in a letter to the court of directors from the governor No. 1. general, Mr. Hastings, written on the 29th of November, supple1780. It has been stated in a former report of your the 24 committee, that on the 26th of June, 1780, Mr. Hastings report, being very earnest in the prosecution of a particular operation in the Mahratta war, in order to remove objections to that measure, which were made on account of the expense of the contingencies, offered to exonerate the company from that "charge." Continuing his minute of council, he says: "That sum (a sum of about 23,000l.) I have already deposited, within a small amount, in the hands of the sub-treasurers, and I beg that the board will permit it to be accepted for that service." Here he offers in his own person; he deposits, or pretends that he deposits, in his own person; and, with the zeal of a man eager to pledge his private fortune in support of his measures, he prays that his offer may be accepted. Not the least hint that he was delivering back to the company money of their own, which he had secreted from them. Indeed, no man ever made it a request, much less earnestly intreated, "begged to be permitted," to pay to any persons, public or private, money that was their own.

It appeared to your committee, that the money offered for that service, which was to forward the operations of a detachment under Colonel Camac, in an expedition against one of the Mahratta chiefs, was not accepted. And your committee having directed search to be made for any sums of money paid into the treasury by Mr. Hastings for this service, found, that notwithstanding hisassertion of having deposited "two lacks of rupees, ot

dix, B.

within a trifle of that sum, in the hands of the sub-trea surer," no entry whatsoever of that or any other payAppen- ment by the governor general, was made in the treasury No. 2. accounts, at or about that time. This circumstance appeared very striking to your committee, as the non-appearance in the company's books of the article in question must be owing to one or other of these four causes ; that the assertion of Mr. Hastings, of his having paid in near two lacks of rupees at that time, was not true; or, that the sub-treasurer may receive great sums in deposit without entering them in the company's treasury accounts; or that the treasury books themselves are records not to be depended on; or, lastly, that faithful copies of these books of accounts are not transmitted to Europe. The defect of an entry, corresponding with Mr. Hasting's declaration in council, can be attributed only to one of these four causes; of which the want of foundation in his recorded assertions, though very blamable, is the least alarming.

Vide

On the 29th of November following, Mr. Hastings appen communicated to the court of directors some sort of nodix, B. No. 1. tice of this transaction. In his letter of that date he varies, in no small degree, the aspect, under which the business appeared in his minute of consultation of the 26th of June. In his letter he says to the directors, "the subject is now become obsolete; the fair hopes, which I had built upon the prosecution of the Mahratta war have been blasted by the dreadful calamities which have befallen your presidency of fort St. George; and changed the object of our pursuit, from the aggrandizement of your power to its preservation." After thus confessing, or rather boasting of his motives to the Mahratta war, he proceeds: "My present reason for reverting to my own conduct on the occasion which I have mentioned" (namely, his offering a sum of money for the company's service) "is to obviate the false conclusions, or purposed misrepresentations, which may be made of it, either as an artifice of ostentation, or the effect of corrupt influence, by assuring you that the money, by whatever means it came into my possession, was not my own; that I had myself no right to it, nor would or could have received it but for the occasion, which prompted me to avail myself of the accidental means, which were at that instant afforded me, of accepting and

converting it to the property and use of the company; and with this brief apology I shall dismiss the subject."

The apology is brief indeed, considering the nature of the transaction; and, what is more material than its length or its shortness, it is in all points unsatisfactory. The matter becomes, if possible, more obscure by his explanation. Here was money received by Mr. Hastings, which, according to his own judgment, he had no right to receive it was money, which "(but for the occasion which prompted him) he could not have accepted:" it was money which came into his, and from his into the company's hands, by ways and means undescribed, and from persons unnamed; yet, though apprehensive of false conclusions, and purposed misrepresentations, he gives his employers no insight whatsoever into a matter, which of all others, stood in the greatest need of a full and clear elucidation.

Although he chooses to omit this essential point, he expresses the most anxious solicitude to clear himself of the charges that might be made against him, of the artifices of ostentation, and of corrupt influence. To discover, if possible, the ground for apprehending such imputations, your committee adverted to the circumstances in which he stood at the time: they found that this letter was despatched about the time that Mr. Francis took his passage for England; his fear of misrepresentation may therefore allude to something which passed in conversation between him and that gentleman at the time the offer was made.

It was not easy, on the mere face of his offer, to give an ill turn to it. The act, as it stands on the minute, is not only disinterested, but generous, and public spirited. If Mr. Hastings apprehended misrepresentation from Mr. Francis, or from any other person, your committee conceive that he did not employ proper means for defeating the ill designs of his adversaries. On the contrary, the course he has taken, in his letter to the court of directors, is calculated to excite doubts and suspicions in minds the most favourably disposed to him. Some degree of ostentation is not extremely blamable, at a time when a man advances largely from his private fortune towards the public service. It is human infirmity at the worst, and only detracts something from the lustre of an action in itself meritorious. The kind of ostentation which is criminal, and criminal only because it is fraudulent, is