[TO TAR EDITOR Or VTR "SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—I give below some more examples of Burke's language which justify the position you have taken up. Here is an instance of Burke's attempting to smother evidence, given by Wilson in one of his notes to James Mill's " History of British India." Burke's opening speech at the impeachment con- tained an elaborate and disgusting description of tortures, &c., inflicted by a certain Deby Sing, the inference being that Hastings was responsible. As a matter of fact, he dismissed Deby Sing as soon as he heard of his misconduct. But
the story of the atrocities which Burke told was greatly exaggerated. It was based on a report drawn up by a man called Paterson, and this report Paterson himself admitted was based on misconception, and informed Burke of this, either before the speech or immediately after it. Burke never retracted, and a letter exists in which he attempts to intimidate Paterson into silence :-
" It is not in my choice, because I do not act for myself but in trust for others, to suffer the Commons of Great Britain to be discredited, without doing all in my power to bring to punish- ment those who, through negligence or other unjustifiable causes, have been the means of misleading them. It is not in my choice for a moment to tolerate any sort of compromise, which tends to destroy the credit, not only of the testimony which Mr. Paterson has collected, but of all other testimony which can be produced hereafter, on any complaint of oppression," &c.
Wilson says the letter is "evidently designed to terrify a timid, though conscientious, man from proclaiming any truth unfavourable to Burke's purposes." It seems like high treason to drag these horrible things up against Burke, but there is no getting away from them. His conduct in the Hastings business is an example of the fatal results of a mixture of enthusiasm and ignorance.—I am, Sir, &o., Z.
" We had a strong fox smell of a Sir Elijah Impey, that his brush and — had left after him along the place. We found him and traced him by that scent. We went to the hole, and there we found as many of the wolves as he thought proper to leave there."
"It is possible Mr. Hastings might be in love with Manny Begum. Be it so ! Many groat men have played the fool for prostitutes, from Mark Anthony's days downwards."
" When a Governor General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and corruption (After a quotation from one of Hastings's minutes.) "Good God ! My Lords, where was this language learnt ? In what country and in what barbarous nation of Hottentots was this jargon learnt ?"
"I not only charge him himself with being guilty of a thousand crimes, but that there is not a soldier or a civil servant in India who does a wrong thing that it is not owing to his example, connivance, and protection."
"My Lords, he looked over that great waste, not like the view in which Satan looks over the kingdoms of the world from a height and sees the power and glory of them, but he looked over the waste of Oude which he had made, with a diabolical malice which one could hardly suppose existed in the prototype himself."
The crimes of Hastings are "crimes that have their rise in avarice, rapacity, pride, cruelty, ferocity, malignity of temper, haughtiness, insolence, in short, my Lords, in everything that manifests a heart blackened to the very blackest—a heart deep in blackness—a heart corrupted, vitiated, and gangrened to the very core."
" Good God! Have they run mad ? Did they ever expect
that we meant to compare this man to Tamerlane, Genghis Khan, or Khoubli Khan ? Good God ! to compare a clerk at a bureau—to compare a fraudulent bullock-contractor, to compare him with the conquerors of the world ! We never said he was a tiger and a lion. No; we have said he was a weasel and a rat ! We have said he has desolated countries as those plagues have desolated countries God Almighty ! Don't we see, re- specting Pharaoh, that when God had a mind to humble his pride and presumption and to bring him to shame, he did not do it with tigers and lions, but he sent them lice, mice, and frogs, and everything that was low and contemptible, to pollute and destroy the country."
On Hastings interrupting Burke with a denial of one of his statements:—" When your Lordships hear us charged with direct falsehoods at your bar, and you hear this wicked wretch who is 'before you— A LORD: Order, order; order !
Buzau: He ought to be sent to Bridewell for going on in this manner As for us, we consider it no more than other noise and brawlings of criminals who, in irons, may be led through the streets raving at the magistrate who has committed them. We consider him as spoor miserable man raving at his accusers."
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