them there? No; they were sent by himself; and if one was sent by any body else for a time, he was soon recalled; so that he is himself answerable for all the peculation which he attributes to the civil service. You see the character given of that service; you there see their accuser; you there see their defender, who, after having defamed both services, military and civil, never punished the guilty in either; and now receives the prodigal praises of both.

I defy the ingenuity of man to show that Mr. Hastings is not the defamer of the service. I defy the ingenuity of man to show that the honor of Great Britain has not been tarnished under his patronage. He engaged to remove all these blood-suckers by the treaty of Chunar; but he never executed that treaty. He proposed to take away the temporary brigade; but he again established it. He redressed no grievance; he formed no improvements in the government; he never attempted to provide a remedy without increasing the evil tenfold. He was the primary and sole cause of all the grievances, civil and military, to which the unhappy natives of that country were exposed; and he was the accuser of all the immediate authors of those grievances, without having punished any one of them. He is the accuser of them all. But the only person whom he attempted to punish was that man, who dared to assert the authority of the court of directors, and to claim an office assigned to him by them.

I will now read to your lordships the protest of General Clavering against the military brigade: "Taking the army from the nabob is an infringement of the rights of an independent prince, leaving only the name and title of it without the power. It is taking his subjects from him, against every law of nature and of nations."

I will next read to your lordships a minute of Mr. Francis's: "By the foregoing letter from Mr. Middleton, it appears that he has taken the government of the nabob's dominions directly upon himself. I was not a party to the resolutions which preceded that measure, and will not be answerable for the consequences of it."

The next paper I will read is one introduced by the managers, to prove that a representation was made by the nabob, respecting the expenses of the gentlemen resident at his court, and written after the removal before-mentioned.

Extract of a Letter from the Vizier to Mr. Macpherson; received the 21st of April, 1785.

"With respect to the expenses of the gentlemen who are here, I have before written in a covered manner; I now write plainly, that I have no ability to give money to the gentlemen, because I am indebted many lacks of rupees to the bankers, for the payment of the company's debt. At the time of Mr. Hastings's departure, I represented to him that I had no resources for the expenses of the gentlemen. Mr. Hastings, having ascertained my distressed situation, told me that after his arrival in Calcutta he would consult with the council, and remove from hence the expenses of the gentlemen, and recall every person, except the gentlemen in office here. At this time, that all the concerns are dependent upon you, and you have in every point given ease to my mind, according to Mr. Hastings's agreement, I hope that the expenses of the gentlemen may be removed from me, and that you may recall every person residing here beyond the gentlemen in office. Although Major Palmer does not at this time demand any thing for the gentlemen, and I have no ability to give them any thing, yet the custom of the English gentlemen is, when they remain here, they will in the end ask for something; this is best, that they should be recalled."

I think so too, and your lordships will think so with me; but Mr. Hastings, who says that he himself thought thus in September, 1781, and engaged to recall these gentlemen, was so afraid of their powerful friends and patrons here, that he left India, and left all that load of obloquy upon his successors. He left a Major Palmer there, in the place of a resident; a resident of his own, as your lordships must see; for

Major Palmer was no resident of the company's. This man received a salary of about £23,000 a year, which he declared to be less than his expenses; by which we may easily judge of the enormous salaries of those who make their fortunes there. He was left by Mr. Hastings as his representative of peculation, his representative of tyranny. He was the second agent appointed to control all power ostensible and unostensible, and to head these gentlemen whose "custom,” the nabob says, "was in the end to ask for money." Money they must have; and there, my lords, is the whole secret.

revenues.

I have this day shown your lordships the entire dependence of Oude on the British empire. I have shown you how Mr. Hastings usurped all power, reduced the prince to a cypher, and made of his minister a mere creature of his own; how he made the servants of the company dependent on his own arbitrary will, and considered independence a proof of corruption. It has been likewise proved to your lordships, that he suffered the army to become an instrument of robbery and oppression; and one of its officers to be metamorphosed into a farmer general; to waste the country and embezzle its You have seen a clandestine and fraudulent system, occasioning violence and rapine; and you have seen the prisoner at the bar acknowledging and denouncing an abandoned spirit of rapacity, without bringing its ministers to justice; and pleading, as his excuse, the fear of offending your lordships and the House of Commons. We have shown you the government, revenue, commerce, and agriculture of Oude, ruined and destroyed by Mr. Hastings and his creatures. And to wind up all, we have shown you an army so corrupted, as to pervert the fundamental principles of justice, which are the elements and basis of military discipline. All this, I say, we have shown you; and I cannot believe, that your lordships will consider that we have trifled with your time, or strained our comments one jot beyond the strict measure of the text.

We have shown you a horrible scene, arising from an as

tonishing combination of horrible circumstances.

The order

in which you will consider these circumstances must be left to your lordships. At present I am not able to proceed further. My next attempt will be to bring before you, the manner in which Mr. Hastings treated movable and immovable property in Oude, and by which he has left nothing undestroyed in that devoted country.

[Adjourned.

TRIAL.

SATURDAY, 7тH JUNE, 1794.

FIFTH DAY OF REPLY.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS, We will now resume the consideration of the remaining part of our charge, and of the prisoner's attempts to defend himself against it.

Mr. Hastings, well knowing, (what your lordships must also by this time be perfectly satisfied was the case,) that this unfortunate nabob had no will of his own, draws down his poor victim to Chunar, by an order to attend the governorgeneral. If the nabob ever wrote to Mr. Hastings, expressing a request or desire for this meeting, his letter was unquestionably dictated to him by the prisoner. We have laid a ground of direct proof before you, that the nabob's being at Chunar, that his proceedings there, and that all his acts were so dictated, and consequently must be so construed.

I shall now proceed to lay before your lordships the acts of oppression, committed by Mr. Hastings through his two miserable instruments; the one, his passive instrument, the nabob; the other, Mr. Middleton, his active instrument, in his subsequent plans for the entire destruction of that country. In page 513 of the printed minutes, you have Mr. Middleton's declaration of his promptitude to represent every thing agreeably to Mr. Hastings's wishes.