Mr. Hastings, however, whilst he gives, with an urbanity for which he is
so much praised, his consent to this confiscation, adds, there must be
pensions secured for all persons losing their estates, who had the
security of our guaranty. Your Lordships know that Mr. Hastings, by his
guaranty, had secured their jaghires to the Nabob's own relations and
family. One would have imagined, that, if the estates of those who were
without any security were to be confiscated at his pleasure, those at
least who were guarantied by the Company, such as the Begums of Oude and
several of the principal nobility of the Nabob's family, would have been
secure. He, indeed, says that pensions shall be given them; for at this
time he had not got the length of violating, without shame or remorse,
all the guaranties of the Company. "There shall," says he, "be pensions
given." If pensions were to be given to the value of the estate, I ask,
What has this violent act done? You shake the security of property, and,
instead of suffering a man to gather his own profits with his own hands,
you turn him into a pensioner upon the public treasury. I can conceive
that such a measure will render these persons miserable dependants
instead of independent nobility; but I cannot conceive what financial
object can be answered by paying that in pension which you are to
receive in revenue. This is directly contrary to financial economy. For
when you stipulate to pay out of the treasury of government a certain
pension, and take upon you the receipts of an estate, you adopt a
measure by which government is almost sure of being a loser. You charge
it with a certain fixed sum, and, even upon a supposition that under the
management of the public the estate will be as productive as it was
under the management of its private owner, (a thing highly improbable,)
you take your chance of a reimbursement subject to all the extra
expense, and to all the accidents that may happen to a public revenue.
This confiscation could not, therefore, be justified as a measure of
economy; it must have been designed merely for the sake of shaking and