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We have nothing to do with this: but we shall remove any degree of uneasiness from your Lordships' minds, and from our own, when we show you in the charge which we shall bring before you this day, that one bribe only received by Mr. Hastings, the smallest of his bribes, or nearly the smallest, the bribe received from Rajah Nobkissin, is alone more than equal to have paid all the charges Mr.
Nobkissin gave him the money, and did not take his bond, I believe, for it; but Nobkissin, we find, immediately afterwards enters upon the stewardship or management of one of the most considerable districts in Bengal.
If it was good for him, it was good for them to be permitted these means of extorting; and if it ought at all to be practised, they ought to be admitted to extort for the good of the Company. Rajah Nobkissin was one of the men from whom he interdicted them to receive bribes, and from whom he received a bribe for his own use.
Mr. Hastings has told you that he wanted to borrow money for his own use, and that he applied to Rajah Nobkissin, who generously pressed it upon him as a gift. Rajah Nobkissin is a banian: you will be astonished to hear of generosity in a banian; there never was a banian and generosity united together: but Nobkissin loses his banian qualities at once, the moment the light of Mr.
If my claim on the Company were not founded in justice, and bonâ fide due, my acceptance of three lacs of rupees from Nobkissin by no means precludes them from recovering that sum from me. No member of this Honorable House suspects me, I hope, of the meanness and guilt of presenting false accounts."
The moment he deliberates, that moment his reason, the fortress, is lost, the walls shake, down it comes, and at the same moment enters Nobkissin into the citadel of his honor and integrity, with colors flying, with drums beating, and Mr. Hastings's garrison goes out, very handsomely indeed, with the honors of war, all for the benefit of the Company. Mr.
Nobkissin was quite shocked at Mr. Hastings's offering him a bond. My Lords, a Gentoo banian is a person a little lower, a little more penurious, a little more exacting, a little more cunning, a little more money-making, than a Jew.
In the year 1783, when I was actually in want of a sum of money for my private expenses, owing to the Company not having at that time sufficient cash in their treasury to pay my salary, I borrowed three lacs of rupees of Rajah Nobkissin, an inhabitant of Calcutta, whom I desired to call upon me with a bond properly filled up.
And we shall prove that Nobkissin, within a year from the time when he gave this bribe, had fallen into arrears to the Company, as their steward, to the amount of a sum the very interest of which, according to the rate of interest in that country, amounted to more than this bribe, taken, as was pretended, for the Company's service. Such are the consequences of a banian's generosity, and of Mr.
Hastings consents to take the money from Nobkissin; Nobkissin gives the money, and is perfectly satisfied. Mr. Hastings took the money with a view to apply it to the Company's service. How? To pay his own contingent bills. "Everything that I do," says he, "and all the money I squander, is all for the Company's benefit.
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