Attack on Mr. to his insinua Burke. that his judgment in this case can be censured by none but those who seem to act as if Dundas in reply they were paid agents to one of the tions against Mr. parties. What does he think of his court of Directors? If they are paid by either the parties, by which of them does he think they are paid? He knows that their decision has been directly contrary to his. Shall I believe that it does not enter into his heart to conceive that any person can steadily and actively interest himself in the protection of the injured and oppressed without being well paid for his service? I have taken notice of this sort of discourse some days ago, so far as it may be supposed to relate to me. I then contented myself, as I shall now do, with giving it a cold, though a very direct contradiction. Thus much I do from respect to truth. If I did more, it might be supposed, by my anxiety to clear myself, that I had imbibed the ideas which, for obvious reasons, the right honorable gentleman wishes to have received concerning all attempts to plead the cause of the natives of India, as if it were a disreputable employment. If he had not forgot, in his present occupation, every principle which ought to have guided him, and, I hope, did guide him, in his late profession [the law], he would have known that he who takes a fee for pleading the cause of distress against power, and manfully performs the duty he has assumed, receives an honorable recompense for a virtuous service. But if the right honorable gentleman will have no regard to fact in his insinuations or to reason in his opinions, I wish him at least to consider that if taking an earnest part with regard to the oppressions exercised in India, and with regard to this most oppressive case of Tanjore in particular, can ground a presumption of interested motives, he is himself the most mercenary man I know. His conduct, indeed, is such that he is on all occasions the standing testimony against himself. He it was that first called to that case the attention of the House. The reports of his own committee are ample and affecting upon that subject; and as many of us as have escaped his massacre must remember the very pathetic picture he made of the sufferings of the Tanjore country on the day when he moved the unwieldy code of his Indian resolutions.12 Has he not stated over and over again, 41 This refers to an insinuation thrown out by Mr. Dundas, some days previous, that Mr. Burke was a paid agent of the Rajah of Tanjore. Nothing could be more false, and the only pretense for it was that William Burke, brother of Edmund, was in the Rajah's service. At that time, Mr. Burke simply repelled the insinuation. He now turns back Mr. Dundas' attack upon himself. 42 Mr. Dundas was chairman of the Committee of Secrecy on Indian Affairs. In 1782 he made a number of voluminous reports on the subject, and intro duced nearly a hundred resolutions to carry out his views. The "massacre" to which Mr. Burke sport ively alludes, seems to have been the defeat of the Coalition Ministry in respect to their East India Bill, in accomplishing which Mr. Dundas bore a very active part. in his reports, the ill treatment of the Rajah of Tanjore (a branch of the royal house of the Mahrattas, every injury to whom the Mahrattas felt as offered to themselves) as a main cause of the alienation of that people from the British power? And does he now think that, to betray his principles, to contradict his declarations, and to become himself an active instrument in those oppressions which he had so tragically lamented, is the way to clear himself of having been actu ated by a pecuniary interest at the time when he chose to appear full of tenderness to that ruined nation? led to the payment of these VIII. The right honorable gentleman is fond of parading on the motives of others, Motives which and on his own. As to himself, he despises the imputations of those who debts. suppose that any thing corrupt could influence him in this his unexampled liberality of the public treasure. I do not know that I am obliged to speak to the motives of the ministry in the arrangements they have made of the pretended debts of Arcot and Tanjore. If I prove fraud and collusion with regard to public money on those right honorable gentlemen, I am not obliged to assign their motives, because no good motives can be pleaded in favor of their conduct. Upon that case I stand; we are at issue, and I desire to go to trial. This, I am sure, is not loose railing or mean insinuation, according to their low and degenerate fashion when they make attacks on the measures of their adversaries. It is a regular and juridical course and, unless I choose it, nothing can compel me to go farther. But since these unhappy gentlemen have dared to hold a lofty tone about their motives, and affect to despise suspicion, instead of being careful not to give cause for it, I shall beg leave to lay before you some general observations on what I conceive was their duty in so delicate a business. suspicion. If I were worthy to suggest any line of prudence to that right honorable gentle- Way for minman, I would tell him that the way to sters to avoid avoid suspicion in the settlement of pecuniary transactions, in which great frauds have been very strongly presumed, is to attend to these few plain principles: First, to hear all parties equally, and not the managers for the suspected claimants only; not to proceed in the dark, but to act with as much publicity as possible; not to precipitate decision; to be religious in following the rules prescribed in the commission under which we act; and lastly, and above all, not to be fond of straining constructions to force a jurisdiction, and to draw to ourselves the management of a trust in its nature invidious and obnoxious to suspicion, where the plainest letter of the law does not compel it. If these few plain rules are observed, no corruption ought to be suspected; if any of them are violated, suspicion will attach in proportion. If all of them are violated, a corrupt motive of some kind or other will not only be suspected, but must be violently presumed. The persons in whose favor all these rules these debts owing ary influence of Paul Benfield, the 43 have been violated, and the conduct of ministers generous design of bestowing Old Sarum on the The payment of toward them, will naturally call for Bank of England, Mr. Benfield has thrown in to the parliament your consideration, and will serve to the borough of Cricklade to re-enforce the counlead you through a series and com- ty_representation! Not content with this, in principal creditor. bination of facts and characters, if order to station a steady phalanx for all future I do not mistake, into the very inmost recesses reforms, this public-spirited usurer, amid his of this mysterious business. You will then be charitable toils for the relief of India, did not in possession of all the materials on which the forget the poor, rotten Constitution of his native principles of sound jurisprudence will found, or country. For her, he did not disdain to stoop will reject the presumption of corrupt motives; to the trade of a wholesale upholsterer for this or, if such motives are indicated, will point out to House, to furnish it, not with the faded tapestry you of what particular nature the corruption is. figures of antiquated merit, such as decorate, Our wonderful minister [Mr. Pitt], as you all and may reproach some other houses, but with know, formed a new plan, a plan insigne, recens, | real, solid, living patterns of true modern virtue. alio indictum ore, a plan for supporting the Paul Benfield made (reckoning himself) no fewfreedom of our Constitution by court intrigues, er than eight members in the last Parliament. and for removing its corruptions by Indian de- What copious streams of pure blood must he not linquency! To carry that bold paradoxical have transfused into the veins of the present! design into execution, sufficient funds and apt instruments became necessary. You are perfectly sensible that a parliamentary reform occupies his thoughts day and night, as an essential member of this extraordinary project. In his anxious researches upon this subject, natural instinet, as well as sound policy, would direct his eyes, and settle his choice on Paul Benfield. Paul Benfield is the grand parliamentary reformer, the reformer to whom the whole choir of reformers bow, and to whom even the right honorable gentleman himself must yield the palm; for what region in the empire, what city, what borough, what county, what tribunal, in this kingdom, is not full of his labors ?45 Others have been only speculators; he is the grand practical reformer; and while the Chancellor of the Exchequer pledges in vain the man and the minister to increase the provincial members, Mr. Benfield has auspiciously and practically begun it. Leaving far behind him even Lord Camelford's 43 Extraordinary and new, uttered by no other mouth. 44 There is great keenness in this attack on Mr. Pitt as a parliamentary reformer. His " "supporting the freedom of our Constitution by court intrigues" refers to his defeating Mr. Fox's East India Bill in the House of Lords by appealing secretly to the King, through Lord Temple, and obtaining a declaration that "whoever voted for the India Bill were not only not his friends [the King's], but that he should consider them his enemies." This use of the powerful influence of the sovereign to overrule the decisions of Parliament was considered by Mr. Burke and his friends as a direct blow at the "freedom of the Constitution." It was also a mode of "removing its corruptions by Indian delinquency," because Mr. Pitt was united with Paul Benfield and other Indian delinquents in opposing Mr. Fox's bill, and these men operated chiefly through the purchase of rotten boroughs, which Mr. Pitt had always treated as the great source of corruption to the Constitution. It was known that Mr. Pitt, out of an avowed regard to his former principles, intended to bring forward some plan of parliamentary reform this session. This called forth the terrible irony and sarcasm of this passage. After his failure in that plan, Mr. Pitt never again attempted parlia mentary reform. 45 Quæ regio in terris nostri non plena laboris ? Parliament, but But what is even more striking than the real services of this new-imported patriot Benfeld did not is his modesty. As soon as he had take his seat in conferred this benefit on the Consti- went to Madras. tution, he withdrew himself from our applause. He conceived that the duties of a member of Parliament (which, with the elect saithful, the true believers, the Islam of parliamentary reform, are of little or no merit, perhaps not much better than specious sins) might be as well attended to in India as in England, and the means of reformation to Parliament itself be far better provided. Mr. Benfield was, therefore, no sooner elected, than he set off for Madras, and defrauded the longing eyes of Parliament. We have never enjoyed in this House the luxury of beholding that minion of the human race, and contemplating that visage, which has so long reflected the happiness of nations. It was, therefore, not possible for the minister to consult personally with this great man. What, then, was he to do? Through a sagacity that never failed him in these pursuits, he found out in Mr. Benfield's representative his exact resemblance. A specific attraction, by which he gravitates toward all such characters, soon brought our minister into a close connection with Mr. Benfield's agent and attorney, that is, with the grand contractor (whom I name to honor), Mr. Richard Atkinson; a name that will be well remembered as long as the records of this House, as long as the records of the British treasury, as long as the monumental debt of England shall endure. his agent, active This gentleman, sir, acts as attorney for Mr. Paul Benfield. Every one who hears Mr. Atkinson, me is well acquainted with the sa- in framing Mr. cred friendship, and the steady, mu- Pitt's India Bill. tual attachment, that subsists between him and the present minister. As many members as chose to attend in the first session of this Parliament can best tell their own feelings at the scenes which were then acted. How much that honorable gentleman was consulted in the original frame and fabric of the bill, commonly called Mr. Pitt's India Bill, is matter only of conjeo 46 Quem gratia honoris nomino. ture, though by no means difficult to divine. | name of Benfield might have stood before those But the public was an indignant witness of the frightful figures. But my best information goes ostentation with which that measure was made to fix his share no higher than four hundred his own, and the authority with which he brought thousand pounds. By the scheme of the presup clause after clause, to stuff and fatten the ent ministry for adding to the principal twelve rankness of that corrupt act. As fast as the per cent. from the year 1777 to the year 1781, clauses were brought up to the table, they were four hundred thousand pounds, that smallest of accepted. No hesitation-no discussion. They the sums ever mentioned for Mr. Benfield, will were received by the new minister, not with ap- form a capital of £592,000 at six per cent. probation, but with implicit submission. The Thus, besides the arrears of three years, amountreformation may be estimated by seeing who ing to £106,500 (which, as fast as received, may was the reformer. Paul Benfield's associate and be legally lent out at twelve per cent.), Benfield agent was held up to the world as legislator of has received, by the ministerial grant before you, Hindostan ! But it was necessary to authenti- an annuity of £35,520 a year, charged on the cate the coalition between the men of intrigue public revenues. in India and the minister of intrigue in England, by a studied display of the power of this their connecting link. Every trust, every honor, every distinction was to be heaped upon him. He was at once made a director of the India Company; made an alderman of London; and to be made, if ministry could prevail (and I am sorry to say how near, how very near they were prevailing), representative of the capital of this kingdom. But, to secure his services against all risk, he was brought in for a ministerial borough. On his part, he was not wanting in zeal for the common cause. His advertisements show his motives, and the merits upon which he stood. For your minister, this worn-out veteran submitted to enter into the dusty field of the London contest; and you all remember, that in the same virtuous cause he submitted to keep a sort of public office or counting-house, where the whole business of the last general election was manHis activity in aged. It was openly managed by the Mr. Pitt's favor direct agent and attorney of Benfield. tion of 1784, and It was managed upon Indian principles, and for an Indian interest. This was the golden cup of abominations; this the chalice of fornications of rapine, usury, and oppression, which was held out by the gorgeous Eastern harlot; which so many of the people, so many of the nobles of this land, had drained to the very dregs. Do you think that no reckoning was to follow this lewd debauch? that no payment was to be demanded for this riot of public drunkenness and national prostitution? Here! you have it here before you. The principal of the grand election manager must be in-effaces the splendor of all the nobility of Europe. demnified; accordingly, the claims of Benfield and his crew must be put above all inquiry! during the elec its reward. Amount of Ben these claims. For several years, Benfield appeared as the chief proprietor, as well as the chief agent, director, and controller of this system of debt. The worthy chairman of the Compafield's interest in ny has stated the claims of this single gentleman on the Nabob of Arcot as amounting to five hundred thousand pounds. Possibly, at the time of the chairman's statement, they might have been as high. Eight hundred thousand pounds had been mentioned some time before; and, according to the practice of shifting the names of creditors in these transactions, and reducing or raising the debt itself at pleasure, I think it not impossible that at one period the Our mirror of ministers of finance did not think this enough for the services of such a friend as Benfield. He found that Lord Macartney, in order to frighten the court of Directors from the object of obliging the Nabob to give soucar security for his debt, assured them that, if they should take that step, Benfield would infallibly be the soucar, and would thereby become the entire master of the Carnatic. What Lord Macartney thought sufficient to deter the very agents and partakers with Benfield in his iniquities was the inducement to the two right honorable gentlemen to order this very soucar security to be given, and to recall Benfield to the city of Madras, from the sort of decent exile into which he had been relegated by Lord Macartney. You must, therefore, consider Benfield as soucar security for £480,000 a year, which, at twenty-four per cent. (supposing him contented with that profit), will, with the interest of his old debt, produce an annual income of £149,520 a year. Here is a specimen of the new and pure aristocracy created by the right honorable gentleman [Mr. Pitt], as the support of the Crown and Constitution, against the old, corrupt, refractory, natural interests of this kingdom; and this is the grand counterpoise against all odious coalitions of these interests. A single Benfield outweighs them all. A criminal, who long since ought to have fattened the region kites with his offal, is, by his Majesty's ministers, enthroned in the government of a great kingdom, and enfeofled with an estate which, in the comparison, To bring a little more distinctly into view the true secret of this dark transaction, I beg you particularly to advert to the circumstances which I am going to place before you. To Madras. and Call, and should, in return, be secured by thought fit to determine on the debt of 1777. their bond. The recorded proceedings at this Benfield permit time knew nothing of any debt to ted to return to Benfield. There was his own testimony; there was the testimony of the list; there was the testimony of the Nabob of Arcot against it; yet such was the ministers' feeling of the true secret of this transaction, that they thought proper, in the teeth of all these testimonies, to give him license to return to Madras! Here the ministers were under some embarrassment. Confounded between their resolution of rewarding the good services of Benfield's friends and associates in England, and the shame of sending that notorious incendiary to the court of the Nabob of Arcot, to renew his intrigues against the British government, at the time they authorize his return, they forbid him, under the severest penalties, from any conversation with the Nabob or his ministers; that is, they forbid his communication with the very person on account of his The debt thus exonerated of so great a weight of its odium, and otherwise reduced from its alarming bulk, the agents thought they might venture to print a list of the creditors. This was lone for the first time in the year 1783, during he Duke of Portland's administration. In this list the name of Benfield was not to be seen. this strong negative testimony was added the farther testimony of the Nabob of Arcot. That prince (or, rather, Mr. Benfield for him) writes to the court of Directors a letter full of complaints and accusations against Lord Macartney, conveyed in such terms as were natural for one of Mr. Benfield's habits and education to employ. Among the rest, he is made to complain of his Lordship's endeavoring to prevent an intercourse of politeness and sentiment between him [the Nabob] and Mr. Benfield; and, to aggravate the affront, he expressly declares Mr. Benfield's visits to be only on account of respect and of grat-dealings with whom they permit his return to itude, as no pecuniary transactions subsisted between them! the mystery to light that city! To overtop this contradiction, there When collusive in. tercourse be tween the Benfield. ministry and Such, for a considerable space of time, was the Sust of Benfield outward form of the loan of 1777, in which brought which Mr. Benfield had no sort of concern. At length intelligence arrived at Madras that this debt, which had always been renounced by the court of Directors, was rather like to become the subject of something more like a criminal inquiry than of any patron-agement was detailed to them at full length by age or sanction from Parliament. Every ship Lord Macartney, and they can not pretend ignobrought accounts, one stronger than the other, rance of it. of the prevalence of the determined enemies of the Indian system. The public revenues became an object desperate to the hopes of Mr. Benfield; he therefore resolved to fall upon his associates, and, in violation of that faith which subsists among those who have abandoned all other, commences a suit in the Mayor's Court against Taylor, Majendie, and Call for the bond given to him, when he agreed to disappear for his own benefit as well as that of the common concern. The assignees of his debt, who little expected the springing of this mine even from such an engineer as Mr. Benfield, after recovering their first alarm, thought it best to take ground on the real state of the transaction. They divulged the whole mystery, and were prepared to plead that they had never received from Mr. Benfield any other consideration for the bond than a transfer, in trust for himself, of his demand on the Nabob of Arcot. A universal indignation arose against the perfidy of Mr. Benfield's proceedings. The event of the suit was looked upon as so certain, that Benfield was compelled to retreat as precipitately as he had advanced boldly; he gave up his bond, and was reinstated in his original demand, to wait the fortune of other claimants. At that time, and at Madras, this hope was dull indeed; but at home another scene was preparing. It was long before any public account of this discovery at Madras had arrived in England that the present minister and his Board of Control I believe, after this exposure of facts, no man can entertain a doubt of the collusion This proves of ministers with the corrupt interest of the delinquents in India. ever those in authority provide for the interest of any person, on the real but concealed state of his affairs, without regard to his avowed, public, and ostensible pretenses, it must be presumed that they are in confederacy with him, because they act for him on the same fraudulent principles on which he acts for himself. It is plain that the ministers were fully apprised of Benfield's real situation, which he had used means to conceal while concealment answered his purposes. They were, or the person on whom they relied was, of the cabinet council of Benfield, in the very depth of all his mysteries. An honest magistrate compels men to abide by one story. An equitable judge would not hear of the claim of a man who had himself thought proper to renounce it. With such a judge his shuffling and prevarication would have damned his claims; such a judge never would have known, but in order to animadvert upon, proceedings of that character. I have thus laid before you, Mr. Speaker, I think with sufficient clearness, the connection of the ministers with Mr. Atkinson at the general election; I have laid open to you the connection of Atkinson with Benfield; I have shown Benfield's employment of his wealth, in creating a parliamentary interest, to procure a ministerial the whole as to that they have only formed an alliance with them for screening each other from justice, according to the exigence of their several necessities. That they have done so is evident; and the junction of the power of office in England with the abuse of protection; I have set before your eyes his large concern in the debt, his practices to hide that concern from the public eye, and the liberal protection which he has received from the minister. If this chain of circumstances do not lead you necessarily to conclude that the minis-authority in the East has not only prevented even Inference from ter has paid to the avarice of Benthe motives for field the services done by Benfield's the payment of connections to his ambition, I do not Arcot's debts. know any thing short of the confession of the party that can satisfy you of his guilt. Clandestine and collusive practice can only be traced by combination and comparison of circumstances. To reject such combination and comparison is to reject the only means of detecting fraud; it is, indeed, to give it a patent and free license to cheat with impunity. the Nabob of the appearance of redress to the grievances of India, but I wish it may not be found to have dulled, if not extinguished, the honor, the candor, the generosity, the good nature, which used formerly to characterize the people of England. I confess I wish that some more feeling than I have yet observed for the sufferings of our fellow-creatures and fellow-subjects in that oppressed part of the world had manifested itself in any one quarter of the kingdom, or in any one large description of men. Hence the op Hindoos over lected. That these oppressions exist is a fact no more denied, than it is resented as it ought to be. Much evil has been done in pressions of the India under the British authority. looked and neg What has been done to redress it? We are no longer surprised at any thing. are above the unlearned and vulgar passion of admiration.18 But it will astonish posterity when they read our opinions in our actions, that, after We I confine myself to the connection of ministers, mediately or immediately, with only two persons concerned in this debt. How many others, who support their power and greatness within and without doors, are concerned originally, or by transfers of these debts, must be left to general opinion. I refer to the reports of the select committee for the proceedings of some of the agents in these affairs, and their attempts, at least, to furnish ministers with the means of buying Gen-years of inquiry, we have found out that the sole eral Courts, and even whole Parliaments, in the gross. charged with acting from tives, but the grievance of India consisted in this, that the servants of the Company there had not profited enough of their opportunities, nor drained it sufficiently of its treasures; when they shall hear that the very first and only important act of a commission, specially named by act of Parliament, is to charge upon an undone country, in favor of a handful of men in the humblest ranks of the public service, the enormous sum of perhaps four millions of sterling money! I know that the ministers will think it little Ministers not less than acquittal, that they are not charged with having taken to thempecary mo- selves some part of the money of which love of power. they have made so liberal a donation to their partisans, though the charge may be in disputably fixed upon the corruption of their politics. For my part, I follow their crimes to that point to which legal presumptions and natural in- It is difficult for the most wise and upright dications lead me, without considering what spe- government to correct the abuses of remote del cies of evil motive tends most to aggravate or to egated power, productive of unmeasured wealth. extenuate the guilt of their conduct; but if I am and protected by the boldness and strength of to speak my private sentiments, I think that in a the same ill-got riches. These abuses, full of thousand cases for one it would be far less mis- their own wild native vigor, will grow and flourchievous to the public, and full as little dishon-ish under mere neglect. But where the supreme orable to themselves, to be polluted with direct bribery, than thus to become a standing auxiliary to the oppression, usury, and peculation of multitudes, in order to obtain a corrupt support to their power. It is by bribing, not so often by being bribed, that wicked politicians bring ruin on mankind. Avarice is a rival to the pursuits It finds a multitude of checks, and many opposers, in every walk of life. But the objects of ambition are for the few; and every person who aims at indirect profit, and therefore wants other protection than innocence and law, instead of its rival, becomes its instrument. There is a natural allegiance and fealty due to this domineering, paramount evil, from all the vassal vices, which acknowledge its superiority, and readily militate under its banners; and it is under that discipline alone that avarice is able to spread, to any considerable extent, or to render itself a general public mischief. It is, therefore, no apology for ministers that they have not been bought by the East India delinquents, but of many. authority, not content with winking at the rapacity of its inferior instruments, is so shameless and corrupt, as openly to give bounties and premiums for disobedience to its laws; when it will not trust to the activity of avarice in the pursuit of its own gains; when it secures public robbery by all the careful jealousy and attention with which it ought to protect property from such violence; the commonwealth then is become totally perverted from its purposes; neither God nor man will long endure it; nor will it long endure itself. In that case, there is an unnatural infection, a pestilential taint fermenting in the constitution of society, which fever and convulsions of some kind or other must throw off; or in which the vital powers, worsted in an un 48 Nil admirari prope res est una, Numici, Not to admire is all the art I know, |