was therefore concluded between the company and Azoph ul Dowlah, in which the latter stipulated to pay a fixed subsidy for the maintenance of a certain number of troops; by which the company's finances were greatly relieved and their military strength greatly increased.

This treaty did not contain one word which could justify any interference in the nabob's government. That evil system, as Mr. Hastings calls it, is not even mentioned or alluded to; nor is there, I again say, one word which authorized Warren Hastings, or any other person whatever, to interfere in the interior affairs of his country. He was legally constituted viceroy of Oude. His dignity of vizier of the empire, with all the power which that office gave him, derived from and held under the Mogul government, he legally possessed; and this evil system, which, Mr. Hastings says, led him to commit the enormities of which you shall hear by and by, was neither more nor less than what I have now stated.

But, my lords, the prisoner thinks, that when, under any pretence, any sort of means could be furnished of interfering in the government of the country, he has a right to avail himself of them; to use them at his pleasure; and to govern by his own arbitrary will. The vizier, he says, by this treaty was reduced to a state of vassalage; and he makes this curious distinction in proof of it. It was, he says, an optional vassalage, for if he chose to get rid of our troops, he might do so and be free; if he had not a mind to do that and found a benefit in it, then he was a vassal. But there is nothing less true. Here is a person who keeps a subsidiary body of your troops, which he is to pay for you, and in consequence of this Mr. Hastings maintains, that he becomes a vassal. I shall not dispute whether vassalage is optional, or by force, or in what way Mr. Hastings considered this prince as a vassal of the company. Let it be as he pleased. I only think it necessary that your lordships should truly know the actual state of that country, and the ground upon which

Mr. Hastings stood. Your lordships will find it a fairy land, in which there is a perpetual masquerade, where no one thing appears as it really is, where the person who seems to have the authority is a slave, while the person who seems to be the slave has the authority. In that ambiguous government every thing favors fraud; every thing favors peculation; every thing favors violence; every thing favors concealment. You will, therefore, permit me to show to you what were the principles upon which Mr. Hastings appears, according to the evidence before you, to have acted; what the state of the country was, according to his conceptions of it; and then you will see how he applied those principles to that state.

"The means by which our government acquired this influence," says Mr. Hastings, "and its right to exercise it, will require a previous explanation." He then proceeds, "With his death (Sujah Dowlah's) a new political system commenced, and Mr. Bristow was constituted the instrument of its formation, and the trustee for the management of it. The nabob Azoph ul Dowlah was deprived of a large part of his inheritance; I mean the province of Benares, attached by a very feeble and precarious tenure to our dominions; the army fixed to a permanent station in a remote line of his frontier, with an augmented and perpetual subsidy. A new army, amphibiously composed of troops in his service and pay, commanded by English officers of our own nomination, for the defence of his new conquests, and his own natural troops annihilated, or alienated by the insufficiency of his revenue for all his disbursements; and the prior claims of those which our authority or influence commanded: in a word, he became a vassal of the government, but he still possessed an ostensible sovereignty. His titular rank of vizier of the empire rendered him a conspicuous object of view to all the states and chiefs of India; and on the moderation and justice with which the British government in Bengal exercised its influence over him, many points most essential to its political strength and to the honor of the British name depended."

Your lordships see, that the system, which is supposed to have reduced him to vassalage, did not make, as he contends, a violent exercise of our power necessary or proper; but possessing, as the nabob did, that high nominal dignity, and being in that state of vassalage, as Mr. Hastings thought proper to term it, though there is no vassalage mentioned in the treaty; being, I say, in that situation of honor, credit, and character, sovereign of a country as large as England, yielding an immense revenue and flourishing in trade; certainly our honor depended upon the use we made of that influence which our power gave us over him; and we therefore press it upon your lordships, that the conduct of Mr. Hastings was such as dishonored this nation.

He proceeds: "This is not a place, nor have I room in it to prove, what I shall here content myself with affirming, that by a sacred and undeviating observance of every principle of public faith, the British dominion might have by this time acquired the means of its extension, through a virtual submission to its authority, to every region of Hindostan and Decan. I am not sure that I should advise such a design, were it practicable, which at this time it certainly is not, and I very much fear that the limited formation of such equal alliances as might be useful to our present condition, and conduce to its improvement, is become liable to almost insurmountable difficulties; every power in India must wish for the support of ours, but they all dread the connection."

"The subjection of Bengal, and the deprivation of the family of Jaffier Ali Khân, though an effect of inevitable necessity, the present usurpations of the rights of the nabob Wallar Jau in the Carnatic, and the licentious violations of the treaty existing between the company and the nabob Nizam ul Dowlah, though checked by the remedial interposition of this government, stand as terrible precedents against us; the effects of our connection with the nabob Azoph ul Dowlah had a rapid tendency to the same consequences, and it has been my invariable study to prevent it."

Your lordships will remember that the counsel at the bar have said, that they undertook the defence of Warren Hastings not in order to defend him, but to rescue the British character from the imputations which have been laid upon it by the Commons of Great Britain. They have said, that the Commons of Great Britain have slandered their country, and have misrepresented its character; while, on the contrary, the servants of the company have sustained and maintained the dignity of the English character, have kept its public faith inviolate, preserved the people from oppression, reconciled every government to it in India, and have made every person under it prosperous and happy.

My lords, you see what this man says himself, when endeavoring to prove his own innocence. Instead of proving it by the facts alleged by his counsel, he declares, that, by preserving good faith, you might have conquered India, the most glorious conquest that was ever made in the world; that all the people want our assistance, but dread our connection. Why? Because our whole conduct has been one perpetual tissue of perfidy and breach of faith, with every person who has been in alliance with us, in any mode whatever; here is the man himself, who says it. Can we bear that this man should now stand up in this place as the asserter of the honor of the British nation against us, who charge this dishonor to have fallen upon us, by him, through him, and during his government ?

But all the mischief, he goes on to assert, was in the previous system, in the formation of which he had no share; the system of 1775, when the first treaty with the nabob was made. "That system," says he, "is not mine, it was made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis." So it was, my lords. It did them very great honor; and I believe it ever will do them honor, in the eyes of the British nation, that they took an opportunity, without the violation of faith, without the breach of any one treaty, and without injury to any person, to do great and eminent services to the

company; but Mr. Hastings disclaims it, unnecessarily disclaims it, for no one charges him with it. What we charge him with, is the abuse of that system. To one of these abuses I will now call your lordships' attention. Finding, soon after his appointment to the office of governor-general, that the nabob was likely to get into debt, he turns him into a vassal, and resolves to treat him as such. You will observe that this is not the only instance in which, upon a failure of payment, the defaulter becomes directly a vassal. You remember how Durbedgy Sing, the moment he fell into an arrear of tribute, became a vassal, and was thrown into prison, without any inquiry into the causes which occasioned that arrear. With respect to the nabob of Oude, we assert, and can prove, that his revenue was £3,600,000 at the day of his father's death; and if the revenue fell off afterwards, there was abundant reason to believe that he possessed in abundance the means of paying the company every farthing. Before I quit this subject, your lordships will again permit me to reprobate the malicious insinuations by which Mr. Hastings has thought proper to slander the virtuous persons who are the authors of that system, which he complains of. They are men whose characters this country will ever respect, honor, and revere, both the living and the dead; the dead for the living, and the living for the dead. They will altogether be revered for a conduct honorable and glorious to Great Britain; whilst their names stand, as they now do, unspotted by the least imputation of oppression, breach of faith, perjury, bribery, or any other fraud whatever. I know there was a faction formed against them, upon that very account. Be corrupt, you have friends; stem the torrent of corruption, you open a thousand venal mouths against you. Men resolved to do their duty must be content to suffer such opprobrium, and I am content; in the name of the living and of the dead, and in the name of the Commons, I glory in our having appointed some good servants, at least, to India.

But to proceed. "This system was not," says he, "of my