XXH. 1787. peachment concluded with denouncing the go- BOOK vernor-general Hastings as “a criminal guilty of great neglect of duty, usurpation of authority, complicated breach of treaty and duplicity, both towards the vizier and the nabob, to the great disgrace of the British name and the discredit of the British government in India; having reduced himself to the situation, that he could neither deliver Muzuffer Jung from oppression without a breach of faith to the nabob vizier, nor suffer him to remain under the said oppression without violating all faith and justice with regard to him." And on the division the accusation was affirmed by a majority of 112 to 50 voices. specting On the 15th of March the charge upon the sub- Charge reject of contracts was brought forward by sir James contracts. Erskine. "All of them (sir James Erskine observed) were made in direct violation of the regulations of the court of directors, that the contracts should be given from year to year, that they should be publicly advertised, and be disposed of to the best bidder.' The contract for rice was avowedly given to Mr. Auriol, as 'a reward for his long and faithful services.' Of his expenditure no vouchers were required, but the accounts were to be given in upon honor. This mode of passing accounts was (the honorable mover observed) peculiar to India, as indeed honor there was of a peculiar naIt dreaded the production of proofs, had ture. BOOK an intuitive abhorrence of being confronted with XXII. 1787. truth, and shrunk, like the sensitive-plant, from the touch of enquiry. The opium-contract was given immediately upon his arrival in Bengal to Mr. Sullivan, son to the chairman of the India Company, who had immediately sold the same to a Mr. Benn for a clear profit of 35,000l.; and Mr. Benn immediately RE-SOLD it for the sum of 59,6ool. Another agency or contract appeared to be conferred on Mr. Belli, for supplying Fort William, &c. with stores. The rate of his commission was fixed by a committee of merchants, to whom it was referred, at twenty per cent.; but Mr. Hastings declared that it should be thirty, and took upon himself solely and expressly all the responsibility of this measure, which added the sum of 34,ocol. to the amount of the profit. A fourth contract, for repairing the pools and banks in the province of Burdwan, held for a series of years by the Rajah of Burdwan, at the rate of 25,000 rupees per ann. was bestowed on Mr. Archibald Fraser, at the rate of 120,000 rupees for the first year, and 80,000 for each of the four succeeding years, with a permission to make special repairs whenever he should judge them necessary at the expence of government. This gentleman was the near relation of sir Elijah, Impey, who had thought it necessary to dispatch affidavits to England for the purpose of clearing himself from the Upon the 23d of March the charge relative to Charge reFyzoola Khan was brought forward by Mr. Wind- Fyzoola ham. This was carried on a division of 96 against 37 voices. Khan. specting On the 2d of April Mr. Sheridan opened to the Charge rehouse the charge upon the subject of presents: presents. upon which occasion he observed, "that the late governor-general had, in every part of his conduct, exhibited proofs of a wild, eccentric, and irregular mind. He had been every thing by starts, and nothing long-now high and lofty, now mean and insidious—now artful and temporising, now rigid and inflexible—in pride, in passion, in all things changeable, except in corruption. His revenge was a tempest, a tornado blackening the horizon, and involving all within the sphere of its influence in one common destruction. But his corruption was regular and systematic, a monsoon blowing uniformly from one point of the compass, and wafting the wealth of India to the same port in one certain direction." Upon a di vision, the numbers appeared, ayes 165, noes 54. BOOK XXII. 1787. Charge re lating to the revenues. On the 19th of April the charge respecting the revenues was opened by Mr. Francis, who had for. merly occupied, with so much honor to himself, but so unavailingly as to the public, the office of member of the Supreme Council in India, and who had recently taken his seat as a member of , the house of commons. This charge was of a very important and interesting nature; and Mr. Francis entered into a most able and elaborate discussion of it. He showed, from the very nature of their tenure," that the zemindars were not mere collectors of the revenue, as they had been artfully represented by Mr. Hastings, but real land-owners possessing a permanent, divisible, and hereditary property, descending even to women." He enumerated the different modes of managing the revenues of Bengal, adopted by Mr. Hastings in the course of thirteen years. "The object of Mr. Hastings (he said) was to avoid coming to a fixed settlement, for then there must be an end to peculation. At the time of his accession to the government the provinces had not perfectly recovered the effects of the dreadful famine which had taken place in Bengal at a very recent period; yet then did the Committee of Circuit, under the sanction of Mr. Hastings, raise the rents of the zemindaries to an unheard-of standard; and by the ensuing project of 1781, the whole landed property of the country was put up to a pretended auction; the proprietors were universally deprived of their annum. 155 XXII. 1787. estates; and banyans, cheats, and adventurers of BOOK all sorts, put into possession of their lands. Under w this settlement, Cantoo Baboo, Mr. Hastings's ba nyan, held farms to the amount of 135,000l. per The directors had ordered the persons composing the Committee of Circuit to be prose cuted, but Mr. Hastings had ordered the prosecu, tion to be withdrawn. A Committee of Revenue was subsequently introduced, under the influence of Gunga Govid Sing, a notorious and adroit villain, which completed the ruin of the country. When Mr. Hastings came into possession of the Bengal government, he found it a fertile, populous and prosperous country; it contained a regular gradation of ranks, like a pyramid, from a well-ordered yeomanry to sovereign princes: but these distinctions have been broken down-the whole nation has been pounded as it were by the oppression of the government into one mass-and the prince was no otherwise discoverable from the peasant than by the superiority of his sufferings, and the more pungent bitterness of his humilia tions." Mr. Francis concluded in these remarkable words:" My particular labor is now at an end. An unremitting perseverance of thirteen years has at last conducted me to that issue which has been the object of all my efforts. Mr. Hastings must now beimpeached-let him have a fair trialI desire no more. In arriving at that object I have |