The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)Burke, Edmund
History
The Works of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke, Vol. 10 (of 12)
Burke, Edmund
Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1760-1820; Political science -- Early works to 1800
Now in the course of these proceedings it was thought necessary that Mr.
Hastings's banian, Cantoo Baboo, (a name your Lordships will be well
acquainted with, and who was the minister in this and all the other
transactions of Mr. Hastings,) should be called before the board to
explain some circumstances in the proceedings. Mr. Hastings ordered his
banian, a native, not to attend the sovereign board appointed by
Parliament for the government of that country, and directed to inquire
into transactions of this nature. He thus taught the natives not only to
disobey the orders of the Court of Directors, enforced by an act of
Parliament, but he taught his own servant to disobey, and ordered him
not to appear before the board. Quarrels, duels, and other mischiefs
arose. In short, Mr. Hastings raised every power of heaven and of hell
upon this subject: but in vain: the inquiry went on.
Mr. Hastings does not meet Nundcomar: he was afraid of him. But he was
not negligent of his own defence; for he flies to the Supreme Court of
Justice. He there prosecuted an inquiry against Nundcomar for a
conspiracy. Failing in that, he made other attempts, and disabled
Nundcomar from appearing before the board by having him imprisoned, and
thus utterly crippled that part of the prosecution against him. But as
guilt is never able thoroughly to escape, it did so happen, that the
Council, finding monstrous deficiencies in the Begum's affairs, finding
the Nabob's allowance totally squandered, that the most sacred pensions
were left unpaid, that nothing but disorder and confusion reigned in all
his affairs, that the Nabob's education was neglected, that he could
scarcely read or write, that there was scarcely any mark of a man left
in him except those which Nature had at first imprinted,--I say, all
these abuses being produced in a body before them, they thought it
necessary to send up to inquire into them; and a considerable deficiency
or embezzlement appearing in the Munny Begum's account of the young
Nabob's stipend, she voluntarily declared, by a writing under her seal,
that she had given 15,000_l._ to Mr. Hastings for an entertainment.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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