SPEECH OF MR. BURKE ON THE NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS, DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS, FEBRUARY 28, 1785. INTRODUCTION. THE design of this speech was to convict Mr. Pitt of a scandalous abuse of power. It charges him with allowing the claims of a set of unprincipled speculators in India to the amount of four millions of pounds, in direct defiance of an act of Parliament drawn up by Mr. Pitt himself. Men of all parties had agreed that these claims were of a highly suspicious character, and ought never to be paid until they were severely scrutinized. Mr. Pitt, in his East India Bill, had therefore provided, that "whereas large sums of money are claimed to be due to British subjects by the Nabob of Arcot, the Court of Directors, as soon as may be, shall take into consideration the origin and justice of these demands." And yet, one of the first acts of the Board of Control created by that bill, was to take the whole matter out of the hands of the Directors just as they had commenced the investigation! This was done by Mr. Henry Dundas, President of the Board of Control, and it is, therefore, against him more immediately that the force of this speech is directed, though Mr. Pitt, as prime minister, was justly held responsible. A mandate was issued for paying all these claims without farther inquiry, and the Directors of the East India Company, notwithstanding their most earnest remonstrances, were compelled to sign an order for disbursing what proved to be nearly five millions of pounds sterling (interest included) on account of these debts.-Mill's British India, v., 26. A few words only will be necessary to explain their origin. Mohammed Ali, Nabob of the Carnatic, or, as he was more commonly called, Nabob of Arcot, from the town where he held his court, was a man of weak judgment but strong passions, who was established in his dominions, to the prejudice of an elder brother, by the policy and arms of the Presidency of Madras. At an early period, he fell under the influence of Paul Benfield and a few other English residents, who played upon his passions, encouraged his schemes of conquest, and ruled him with absolute authority. They no doubt lent him money to some extent; but, as their means were limited, the amount could not have been very great. Every thing which they did lend, however, was put upon extravagant interest; and when he failed to pay, the amount was sometimes doubled or tripled in taking new securities. There is also reason to believe, that, in order to obtain their favor, he gave them acknowledgments of debts to an immense amount, which were understood by both parties to be purely fictitious. Thus, from time to time, enormous sums were put upon interest, at the rate of twenty or thirty per cent. a year, until the annual proceeds of the debts thus accumulated were equal, as Mr. Burke remarks, to "the revenue of a respectable kingdom." The Directors of the Company, in the mean time, had no knowledge of these proceedings, which were studiously concealed from all but the immediate agents in this system of usury and peculation. The Nabob at last became wholly unable to protect the dominions over which he had been placed, and the Company were compelled, in self-defense, and for the accomplishment of their designs, to take the military operations of the country into their own hands. In doing this, they received from the Nabob an assignment of his revenues, for the purpose of defraying the expense. But it now came out that these very revenues, to a great extent, had been previously assigned to Benfield and his friends, to secure the interest on their claims. Hence it was important for the Company to inquire how far these claims had any real foundation. Under Mr. Pitt's East India Bill, this inquiry became equally important to the whole British nation, because the civil and military concerns of India had now passed into the hands of the government at home. Whatever allowance was made to Benfield and his associates on the score of these debts, was so much money deducted from the resources provided for the government of India. Any deficit that occurred was of course to be supplied out of the general treasury of the empire; and the question was, therefore, truly stated by Mr. Burke to be this, "Whether the Board of Control could transfer the public revenue to the private emolument of certain servants of the East India Company, without the inquiry into the origin and justice of their claims, prescribed by an act of Parliament." Mr. Fox brought the subject before the House in a call for papers, supported by a powerful speech, on the evening of the 28th of February, 1785. Mr. Dundas replied at great length, and was followed by Sir Thomas Rumbold, formerly President of Madras, who condemned the decision of the Board in brief but energetic terms. It was now late, and the cry of "Question!" "Question!" was heard from every quarter. At this moment Mr. Burke rose and commenced the speech before us, which lasted five hours! Never did a man speak under such adverse circumstances. The House was completely wearied out by the preceding discussion; and the majority, besides being prejudiced against Mr. Burke on other grounds, were so vexed at the unfortunate timing and length of his speech, that the more he dilated on the subject, the more firmly they were resolved to vote him down. In fact, no one that night seems to have had any conception of the real character of the speech which was delivered in their hearing. Lord Grenville was asked by Mr. Pitt, toward the close, whether it was best to reply, and instantly said, "No! not the slightest impression has been made. The speech may with perfect safety be passed over in silence." And yet, if Lord Grenville had been called upon, at a subsequent period of his life, to name the most remarkable speech in our language for its triumph over the difficulties of the subject, for the union of brilliancy and force, of comprehensive survey and minute detail, of vivid description and impassioned eloquence, he would at once, probably, have mentioned the speech on the Nabob of Arcot's debts. It does not, however, contain as much fine philosophy, or profound remark, as some of Mr. Burke's earlier speeches. Nor is it faultless in style, though it is generally distinguished by an elastic energy of expression admirably suited to the subject. Still, there are passages which mark a transition into greater profluence of imagery on the one hand, and greater coarseness of language on the other, arising from the excited state of Mr. Burke's mind. Never had his feelings been so completely roused. In none of his speeches do we find so much of cutting sarcasm. In none, except that against Warren Hastings, has he poured out his whole soul in such fervid declamation. His description of Hyder Ali, sweeping over the Carnatic with fire and sword, is the most eloquent passage which he ever produced. Lord Brougham has pronounced this speech "by far the first of all Mr. Burke's orations." SPEECH, &c. that our concerns in India were matters of delicacy; that to divulge any thing relative to them would be mischievous to the state. He did not tell us that those who would inquire into his proceedings were disposed to dismember the empire. He had not the presumption to say that, for his part, having obtained, in his Indian his honor was concerned in executing with integrity the trust which had been legally committed to his charge; that others, not having been so fortunate, could not be so disinterested, and therefore their accusations could spring from no other source than faction, and envy to his fortune. THE times we live in, Mr. Speaker, have been distinguished by extraordinary events. Habituated, however, as we are, to uncommon combinations of men and of affairs, I believe nobody recollects any thing more surprising than the spectacle of this day. The right honorable gentleman [Mr. Dundas], whose conduct is now in question, formerly stood forth in this House the pros-presidency, the ultimate object of his ambition, ecutor of the worthy baronet [Sir Thomas Rumbold] who spoke after him. He charged him with several grievous acts of malversation in office; with abuses of a public trust of a great and heinous nature. In less than two years we see the situation of parties reversed, and a singular revolution puts the worthy baronet in a fair way of returning the prosecution in a recriminatory bill of pains and penalties, grounded on a breach of public trust, relative to the government of the very same part of India. If he should undertake a bill of that kind, he will find no difficulty in conducting it with a degree of skill and vigor fully equal to all that have been exerted against him.' But the change of relation between these two gentlemen is not so striking as the total difference of their deportment under the same unhappy circumstances. Whatever the merits of the worthy baronet's defense might have been, he did not shrink from the charge. He met it with manliness of spirit and decency of behavior. What would have been thought of him if he had held When the present language of his old accuser? articles were exhibited against him by that right honorable gentleman, he did not think proper to tell the House that we ought to institute no inquiry, to inspect no paper, to examine no witHe did not tell us (what at that time he might have told us with some show of reason) ness. It requires a minute knowledge of the times to understand this reference. Mr. Dundas, in 1782, had brought in a bill of pains and penalties against Sir Thomas Rumbold for high crimes and misdemeanors as Governor of Madras; but he managed it so badly, that he was at last compelled to give it up in disgrace. Hence Mr. Burke's reference to his "skill and energy" was a cutting sarcasm which Mr. Dundas could not but feel most keenly. Had he been frontless enough to hold such vain, vaporing language, in the face of a grave, a detailed, a specified matter of accusation, while he violently resisted every thing which could bring the merits of his cause to the test; had he been wild enough to anticipate the absurdities of this day; that is, had he inferred, as his late accuser has thought proper to do, that he could not have been guilty of malversation in office, for this sole and curious reason, that he had been in office; had he argued the impossibility of his abusing his power on this sole principle, that he had power to abuse, he would have left but one impression on the mind of every man who heard him, and who believed him in his senses-that, in the utmost extent, he was guilty of the charge. 2 This is the best of Mr. Burke's exordiums; it would be difficult, indeed, to find a better in any oration, ancient or modern, except that of Demosthenes for the Crown. It springs directly out of a turn in the Be debate, and has therefore all the freshness and inter- الان 1785.] NABOB OF ARCOT'S DEBTS. Subject-Debts But, sir, leaving these two gentlemen to altern- | the law? This can not be supposed even of an ate, as criminal and accuser, upon what princi- act of Parliament conceived by the ministers ples they think expedient, it is for us to consider themselves, and brought forth during the deliriwhether the Chancellor of the Exchequer [Mr. um of the last session.3 II. My honorable friend [Mr. Fox] has told Pitt] and the Treasurer of the Navy [Mr. Dundas], acting as a Board of Control, are justified, by law you in the speech which introduced or policy, in suspending the legal arrangements his motion, that, fortunately, this of the Nabob of made by the court of Directors, in order to trans-question is not a great deal involv- volved in any pefer the public revenues to the private emolumented in the labyrinths of Indian detail. of certain servants of the East India Company, without the inquiry into the origin and justice of their claims prescribed by an act of Parlia inent. Preliminary Arcot: Not in culiar mystery. requisite; but, on any specific matter of delinquency in its government, you are as capable of judging as if the same thing were done at your door. Fraud, injustice, oppression, peculation, engendered in India, are crimes of the same blood, family, and cast with those that are born and bred in England. To go no farther than the case before us: you are just as competent to judge whether the sum of four millions sterling ought, or ought not, to be passed from the public treasury into a private pocket, without any title except the claim of the parties, when the issue of fact is laid in Madras, as when it is laid in Westminster. Terms of art, indeed, are different in different places, but they are generally underThe technical style of an Indian stood in none. treasury is not one jot more remote than the jargon of our own exchequer, from the train of our ordinary ideas, or the idiom of our common language. Certainly not; but if it were, I beg leave to assure you that there is nothing in the Indian detail which is more difficult than the detail of any other business. I admit, because I have some I. It is not contended that the act of Parlia- experience of the fact, that, for the interior regment did not expressly ordain an in-ulation of India, a minute knowledge of India is discussion quiry. It is not asserted that this inof the law. quiry was not, with equal precision of terms, specially committed, under particular regulations, to the court of Directors. I conceive, therefore, the Board of Control had no right whatsoever to intermeddle in that business. (1.) There is nothing certain in the principles of jurisprudence, if this be not undeniably true, that when a special authority is given to any persons by name, to do some particular act, no others, by virtue of general powers, can obtain a legal title to intrude themselves into that trust, and to exercise those special functions in their place. I therefore consider the intermeddling of ministers in this affair as a downright usurpation. But if the strained construction by which they have forced themselves into a suspicious office (which every man, delicate with regard to character, would rather have sought constructions to avoid) The difference, therefore, in the two were perfectly sound and perfectly legal, of this I am certain, (2.) That they can not be justified cases is not in the comparative difficulty or facilin declining the inquiry which had been pre- ity of the two subjects, but in our attention to scribed to the court of Directors. If the Board the one and our total neglect of the other. Had of Control did lawfully possess the right of exe- this attention and neglect been regulated by the cuting the special trust given to that court, they value of the several objects, there would be nothmust take it as they found it, subject to the very ing to complain of. same regulations which bound the court of Di-position is true. It will be allowed that the court of Directors had no authority to dispense with either the substance or the mode of inquiry prescribed by the act of Parliament. If they had not, where, in the act, did the Board of Control acquire that capacity? Indeed, it was impossible they should acquire it. What must we think of the fabric and texture of an act of Parliament which should find it necessary to prescribe a strict inquisition; that should descend into minute regulations for the conduct of that inquisition; that should commit this trust to a particular description of men, ander the elections of 1784, which had annihilated the in the very same breath should enable another body, at their own pleasure, to supersede all the provisions the Legislature had made, and to defeat the whole purpose, end, and object of infinitely more severe from the indirect form which it assumes-showing what Sir Thomas Rumbold did not do, and turning each of these negatives into a cutting reflection upon Mr. Dundas, as having "left but one impression on the mind of every man who heard him, and who believed him in his senses that, in the utmost extent, he was guilty of the charge.' rectors. In our But the reverse of that supThe scene of the Indian abuse is distant, indeed; but we must not infer that the value of our interest in it is decreased in proportion as it recedes from our view. politics, as in our common conduct, we shall be worse than infants, if we do not put our senses under the tuition of our judgment, and effectually cure ourselves of that optical illusion which 3 That session was one of which we could not ex those of bitter disappointment and the keenest aspect Mr. Burke to speak in any other terms than perity. It was the first meeting of Parliament aft power of Mr. Fox, and put his young rival in complete possession of the House, as prime minister. One of its most important acts was the passing adopted the most valuable features of Mr. Fox's of Mr. Pitt's East India Bill, which dexterously bill. We may easily conceive of Mr. Burke's mortification at seeing the results of his labors thus turned to the advantage of one by whom he was driven from power. Early in this session the wellknown case of the Westminster election came up, in respect to which Mr. Fox was certainly treated with arrogance and injustice by Mr. Pitt. To this, undoubtedly, Mr. Burke here alludes in part. View in public source of ca lamity to the empire. 4 us. the House. the public ac makes a brier at our nose, of greater magnitude | leading to despair, at the manner in which we than an oak at five hundred yards' distance. are acting in the great exigencies of Illustration from I think I can trace all the calamities of this our country. There is now a bill two bills before Narrowness of country to the single source of our not in this House appointing a rigid inmen the great having had steadily before our eyes a quisition into the minutest detail of our offices general, comprehensive, well-connect- at home. The collection of sixteen millions aned, and well-proportioned view of the nually, a collection on which the pub- (1.) That on the whole of our dominions, and a just sense of their lic greatness, safety, and credit have management of true bearings and relations. After all its re- their reliance; the whole order of counts. ductions, the British empire is still vast and va- criminal jurisprudence, which holds together sorious. After all the reductions of the House ciety itself, have at no time obliged us to call of Commons (stripped as we are of our bright- forth such powers; no, nor any thing like them. est ornaments and of our most important privi- There is not a principle of the law and constituleges), enough are yet left to furnish us, if we tion of this country that is not subverted to favor please, with means of showing to the world that the execution of that project. And for what is we deserve the superintendence of as large an all this apparatus of bustle and terror? Is it empire as this kingdom ever held, and the con- because any thing substantial is expected from tinuance of as ample privileges as the House of it? No: the stir and bustle itself is the end Commons, in the plenitude of its power, had proposed! The eye-servants of a short-sighted been habituated to assert. But if we make our- master will employ themselves, not on what is selves too little for the sphere of our duty; if, on most essential to his affairs, but on what is nearthe contrary, we do not stretch and expand our est to his ken. Great difficulties have given a minds to the compass of their object, be well just value to economy; and our minister of the assured that every thing about us will dwindle day must be an economist, whatever it may cost by degrees, until at length our concerns are But where is he to exert his talents? At shrunk to the dimensions of our minds. It is not home, to be sure; for where else can he obtain a a predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares, profitable credit for their exertion? It is nothing that will avert the consequences of a false esti- to him whether the object on which he works mation of our interest, or prevent the shameful under our eye be promising or not. If he does dilapidation into which a great empire must fall, not obtain any public benefit, he may make regby mean reparations upon mighty ruins.5 ulations without end. Those are sure to pay in present expectation, while the effect is at a distance, and may be the concern of other times and other men. On these principles he chooses to suppose (for he does not pretend more than to suppose) a naked possibility, that he shall draw some resource out of crumbs dropped from the trenchers of penury; that something shall be laid in store from the short allowance of revenue officers overloaded with duty and famished for In this paragraph we have one of those fine want of bread; by a reduction from officers who generalizations which give so much richness and are at this very hour ready to batter the treasuforce to the eloquence of Mr. Burke. In the pre- ry with what breaks through stone walls for an ceding paragraph he exposes one of the most comincrease of their appointments. From the marmon errors among men, that of allowing their interrowless bones of these skeleton establishments, est in an object to decrease as it recedes from view ; and this error he places in the strongest light, by his by the use of every sort of cutting, and of every image of the brier and the oak when seen at differ- sort of fretting tool, he flatters himself that he ent distances. Here most orators would have stop-may chip and rasp an empirical alimentary powped; not so Mr. Burke; his observation had taught him that this was peculiarly the error of English politicians. In his first great speech, that on American taxation, he had, eleven years before, pointed out a similar error, as the leading characteristic of I confess I feel a degree of disgust, almost 4 Mr. Burke, in speaking of the loss of some of 'our brightest ornaments," refers no doubt to a number of very able men of the Whig party, about one hundred and sixty of whom lost their election, in 1784, through their adherence to Mr. Fox and his East India Bill. The "privileges" here referred to were those denied to Mr. Fox in respect to the Westminster election. der, to diet into some similitude of health and substance the languishing chimeras of fraudulent reformation. While he is thus employed according to his Lord North. He dwelt on the "mischief of not hav- policy and to his taste, he has not leisure to ining large and liberal ideas in the management of quire into those abuses in India that are drawgreat affairs." "Never," says he, "have the serving off money by millions from the treasures of ants of the state looked at the whole of your complicated interests in one view. They have taken things by bits and scraps, some at one time and one pretense, and some at another, just as they are pressed, without any sort of regard to their relations and dependencies." It was thus that America was lost to England through the folly of Lord North; and it was by the same narrowness of view," the same predilection to mean, sordid, home-bred cares," that Parliament, under the guidance of Mr. Pitt, were sacrificing the highest interests of the empire by their neglect of Indian affairs, and seeking to sustain this country, which are exhausting the vital juices from members of the state, where the public inanition is far more sorely felt than in the local exchequer of England. Not content with winking at these abuses, while he attempts to squeeze the laborious, ill-paid drudges of English revenue, he lavishes in one act of corrupt prodigality, upon those who never served the the fabric of government "by mean reparations upon mighty ruins." (2.) That on commercial intercourse between Ireland. It is to draw your attention to economy of quite another order it is to animad- The moneyed public in any honest occupation at all, an annual Strange as this scheme of conduct in ministry income equal to two thirds of the whole collec-is, and inconsistent with all just policy, it is still tion of the revenues of this kingdom. true to itself, and faithful to its own perverted Actuated by the same principle of choice, he order. Those who are bountiful to crimes will has now on the anvil another scheme, be rigid to merit and penurious to service. Their full of difficulty and desperate haz- penury is even held out as a blind and cover to Great Britain and ard, which totally alters the com- their prodigality. The economy of injustice is mercial relation of two kingdoms; to furnish resources for the fund of corruption. and what end soever it shall have, may bequeath Then they pay off their protection to great crimes a legacy of heart-burning and discontent to one and great criminals, by being inexorable to the of the countries, perhaps to both, to be perpetu- paltry frailties of little men; and these modern ated to the latest posterity. This project is also Flagellants are sure, with a rigid fidelity, to undertaken on the hope of profit. It is provid- whip their own enormities on the vicarious back ed, that out of some (I know not what) remains of every small offender." of the Irish hereditary revenue, a fund at some time, and of some sort, should be applied to the protection of the Irish trade. Here we are com- vert on offenses of a far different de- concerns of India more manded again to tax our faith, and to persuade scription, that my honorable friend worthy of atourselves, that out of the surplus of deficiency,[Mr. Fox] has brought before you the out of the savings of habitual and systematic prodigality, the minister of wonders will provide support for this nation, sinking under the mountainous load of two hundred and thirty millions of debt. But while we look with pain at his desperate and laborious trifling—while we are apprehensive that he will break his back in stooping to pick up chaff and straws, he recovers himself at an elastic bound, and with a broad-cast swing of his arms, he squanders over his Indian field a sum far greater than the clear produce of the whole hereditary revenue of the kingdom of Ireland. The reader can not but notice the rhetorical skill with which these two instances, taken from measures then before the House, and therefore the more striking, are brought forward by Mr. Burke to illustrate his general principle, as stated above. They are both put, especially the former one, with great power of language and thought. They add all the liveliness and pungency of individual application to the weight and authority of a general truth. But they do more-and here is part of the skill-they reach forward as well as backward. They not only illustrate the past, but prepare for the future. They lay the foundation of another at tack. They furnish the ground of the fine contrast here drawn between Mr. Pitt's penuriousness at home and prodigality abroad. They open the way for the keen philosophy of the next paragraph, which shows how "the economy of injustice" is made to "furnish resources for the fund of corruption." Thus they lead on to the next great portion of the speech, which insists on "an economy of quite another order," and demands the strictest inquiry into grants thus lavishly made to a band of Indian peculators. This fine adjustment of the several parts of an oration, mutually to support or prepare the way for each other, is one of the most striking characteristics of the great orators of antiquity, and especially of Demosthenes. Most readers overlook it, and are wholly unconscious that there is any art in the case. The orator seems so completely to "speak right on," that they are not in the least aware of the skill with which he has selected and arranged his materials with a view to bring every thing forward in its proper place, and to give every thing the appearance of an unpremeditated and spontaneous effusion of thought. tention. motion of this day. It is to perpetuate the abuses which are subverting the fabric of your empire, that the motion is opposed. It is therefore with reason (and, if he has power to carry himself through, I commend his prudence) that the right honorable gentleman [Mr. Dundas] makes his stand at the very outset, and boldly refuses all parliamentary information. Let him admit but one step toward inquiry, and he is undone. You must be ignorant, or he can not be safe. But, before his curtain is let down, and the shades of eternal night shall vail our Eastern dominions from our view, permit me, sir, to avail myself of the means which were furnished in anxious and inquisitive times, to demonstrate out of this single act of the present minister what advantages you are to derive from permitting the greatest concern of this nation to be separated from the cognizance, and exempted even out of the competence, of Parliament. The greatest body of your revenue, your most numerous armies, your most important commerce, the richest sources of your public credit (contrary to every idea of the known settled policy of England), are on the point of being converted into a mystery of state. You are going to have one half of the globe hid even from the common liberal curiosity of an English gentleman. Here a grand revolution commences.8 Mark the period, and mark the The Flagellants were a sect of the thirteenth century, who sought to expiate their crimes by the discipline of the scourge. They traversed Europe, whipping themselves through the principal cities and at the doors of churches, and creating great commotion wherever they appeared. 8 This prediction proved true. The establishment of the Board of Control, under Mr. Pitt's bill, merged the civil and political concerns of India in those of the British government. "The President of the Board of Control," says Mill, in his British India, "is essentially a new Secretary of State, a Secre. tary for the Indian Department. ***The other five members of the Board are seldom called to deliberate, or, even for form's sake, to assemble. *** Of this pretended Board, and real Secretary, the sphere of action extends to the whole of the civil and mili tary government exercised by the Company, but not to their commercial transactions."-iv., 487. |