his peculations-and that he had been subjected to all this degradation for the purposes of the most odious tyranny, violence, and corruption.

Mr. Hastings, having assumed the government to himself, soon made Oude a private domain. It had, to be sure, a public name, but it was to all practical intents and purposes. his park or his warren; a place, as it were, for game; whence he drew out or killed at an earlier or later season, as he thought fit, any thing he liked, and brought it to his table according as it served his purpose. Before I proceed, it will not be improper for me to remind your lordships of the legitimate ends to which all controlling and superintending power ought to be directed. Whether a man acquires this power by law or by usurpation, there are certain duties attached to his station. Let us now see what these duties are.

The first is to take care of that vital principle of every state, its revenue. The next is to preserve the magistracy and legal authorities, in honor, respect, and force. And the third to preserve the property, movable, and immovable, of all the people committed to his charge.

In regard to his first duty, the protection of the revenue; your lordships will find that from three millions and upwards, which I stated to be the revenue of Oude, and which Mr. Hastings, I believe, or any body for him, has never thought proper to deny-it sunk under his management to about 1,440,000 and even this, Mr. Middleton says, (as you may see in your minutes,) was not completely realized. Thus my lords, you see, that one half of the whole revenue of the country was lost after it came into Mr. Hastings's management. Well, but it may perhaps be said this was owing to the nabob's own imprudence. No such thing, my lords; it could not be so; for the whole real administration and government of the country was in the hands of Mr. Hastings's agents, public or private.

To let you see how provident Mr. Hastings's management of it was, I shall produce to your lordships one of the prin

cipal manœuvres that he adopted for the improvement of the revenue and for the happiness and prosperity of the country, the latter of which will always go along, more or less, with the first.

The nabob, whose acts your lordships have now learned to appreciate as no other than the acts of Mr. Hastings, writes to the council to have a body of British officers for the purposes of improving the discipline of his troops, collecting his revenues, and repressing disorder and outrage among his subjects. This proposal was ostensibly fair and proper; and if I had been in the council at that time, and the nabob had really and bonâ fide made such a request, I should have said he had taken a very reasonable and judicious step, and that the company ought to aid him in his design.

Among the officers sent to Oude, in consequence of this requisition, was the well known Colonel Hannay; a man whose name will be bitterly and long remembered in India. This person, we understand, had been recommended to Mr. Hastings by Sir Elijah Impey; and his appointment was the natural consequence of such patronage. I say the natural consequence, because Sir Elijah Impey appears on your minutes to have been Mr. Hastings's private agent and negotiator in Oude. In that light, and in that light only, I consider Colonel Hannay in this business. We cannot prove that he was not of Mr. Hastings's own nomination originally and primarily ; but whether we take him in this way, or as recommended by Sir Elijah Impey, or any body else, Mr. Hastings is equally responsible.

Colonel Hannay is sent up by Mr. Hastings, and has the command of a brigade, of two regiments I think, given to him. Thus far all is apparently fair and easily understood; but in this country we find every thing in masquerade and disguise. We find this man, instead of being an officer, farmed the revenue of the country, as is proved by Colonel Lumsden and other gentlemen, who were his sub-farmers and his assistants. Here, my lords, we have à man, who appeared

to have been sent up the country as a commander of troops, agreeably to the nabob's request; and who, upon our inquiry, we discover to have been farmer general of the country ! We discover this with surprise; and I believe till our inquiries began it was unknown in Europe. We have, however, proved upon your lordships's minutes, by an evidence produced by Mr. Hastings himself, that Colonel Hannay was actually farmer-general of the countries of Barratch and Gurruckpore. We have proved upon your minutes that Colonel Hannay was the only person possessed of power in the country; that there was no magistrate in it, nor any admimistration of the law whatever. We have proved to your lordships that, in his character of farmer-general, he availed himself of the influence derived from commanding a battalion of soldiers; in short, we have proved that the whole power, civil, military, municipal, and financial, resided in him; and we further refer your lordships to Mr. Lumsden and Mr. Halhed, for the authority which he possessed in that country. Your lordships, I am sure, will supply with your diligence what is defective, in my statement; I have therefore, taken the liberty of indicating to you where you are to find the evidence to which I refer. You will there, my lords, find this Colonel Hannay in a false character-he is ostensibly given to the nabob as a commander of his troops; while in reality he is forced upon that prince as his farmer-general. He is invested with the whole command of the country, while the sovereign is unable to control him, or to prevent his extorting from the people whatever he pleases.

If we are asked what the terms of his farm were ;-we cannot discover that he farmed the country at any certain sum. We cannot discover that he was subjected to any terms, or confined by any limitations. Armed with arbitrary power, and exercising that power under a false title, his exactions from the poor natives were only limited by his own pleasure. Under these circumstances, we are now to ask what there was to prevent him from robbing and ruining the

people; and what security against his robbing the exchequer of the person whose revenue he farmed?

You are told by the witnesses in the clearest manner, and, after what you have heard of the state of Oude, you cannot doubt the fact, that nobody, not even the nabob, dared to complain against him; that he was considered as a man authorized and supported by the power of the British government; and it is proved in the evidence before you that he vexed and harassed the country to the utmost extent which we have stated in our article of charge, and which you would naturally expect from a man acting under such false names with such real powers. We have proved that from some of the principal zemindars in that country, who held farms let to them for 27,000 rupees a year, a rent of 60,000 was demanded, and in some cases enforced; and that upon the refusal of one of them to comply with this demand, he was driven out of the country.

Your lordships will find in the evidence before you, that the inhabitants of the country were not only harassed in their fortunes, but cruelly treated in their persons. You have it upon Mr. Halhed's evidence, and it is not attempted, that I know of, to be contradicted, that the people were confined in open cages exposed to the scorching heat of the sun, for pretended or real arrears of rent; it is indifferent which, because I consider all confinement of the person to support an arbitrary exaction, to be an abomination not to be tolerated. They have endeavored, indeed, to weaken this evidence by an attempt to prove that a man, day and night in confinement in an open cage, suffers no inconvenience. And here I must beg your lordships to observe the extreme unwillingness that appears in these witnesses. Their testimony is drawn from them drop by drop, their answers to our questions are never more than yes or no; but when they are examined by the counsel on the other side, it flows as freely as if drawn from a perennial spring; and such a spring we have in Indian corruption. We have, however, proved, that in these cages

the renters were confined, till they could be lodged in the dungeons or mud forts. We have proved that some of them were obliged to sell their children; that others fled the country, and that these practices were carried to such an awful extent, that Colonel Hannay was under the necessity of issuing orders against the unnatural sale and flight which his rapacity had occasioned. The prisoner's counsel have attempted to prove that this had been a common practice in that country-and though possibly some person as wicked as Colonel Hannay might have been there before at some time or other, no man ever sold his children, but under the pressnre of some cruel exaction. Nature calls out against it. The love that God has implanted in the heart of parents towards their children is the first germ of that second conjunction, which he has ordered to subsist between them and the rest of mankind. It is the first formation and first bond of society. It is stronger than all laws; for it is the law of nature, which is the law of God. Never did a man sell his children, who was able to maintain them. It is therefore not only a proof of his exactions, but a decisive proof that these exactions were intolerable.

Next to the love of parents for their children, the strongest instinct both natural and moral, that exists in man, is the love of his country-an instinct indeed, which extends even to the brute creation. All creatures love their offspring; next to that they love their homes; they have a fondness for the place where they have been bred, for the habitations they have dwelt in, for the stalls in which they have been fed, the pastures they have browsed in, and the wilds in which they have roamed. We all know that the natal soil has a sweetness in it beyond the harmony of verse. This instinct, I say, that binds all creatures to their country, never becomes inert in us, nor ever suffers us to want a memory of it. Those, therefore, who seek to fly their country, can only wish to fly from oppression; and what other proof can you want of this oppression, when, as a witness has told you, Colonel