who desires, in a suppliant, decent, proper tone, that the company's orders should produce their effect, and that the council would have the goodness to restore him to his situation.

My lords, you have seen the audacious insolence, the tyrannical pride, with which he dares to treat this order. You have seen the recorded minute, which he has dared to send to the court of directors; and in this you see that, when he cannot directly asperse a man's conduct, and has nothing to say against it, he maliciously, I should perhaps rather say enviously, insinuates that he had unjustly made his fortune.

You are," says he, "to judge from the independence of his manner and style, whether he could or no have got that without some unjust means.' God forbid I should ever be able to invent any thing that can equal the impudence of what this man dares to write to his superiors, or the insolent style in which he dares to treat persons who are not his servants.

Who made the servants of the company the master of the servants of the company? The court of directors are their fellow servants; they are all the servants of this kingdom. Still the claim of a fellow servant to hold an office, which the court of directors had legally appointed him to, is considered by this audacious tyrant as an insult to him. By this you may judge how he treats not only the servants of the company, but the natives of the country, and by what means he has brought them into that abject state of servitude, in which they are ready to do any thing he wishes, and to sign any thing he dictates. I must again beg your lordships to remark, what this man has had the folly and impudence to place upon the records of the council of which he was president; and I will venture to assert, that so extraordinary a performance never before appeared on the records of any court, Eastern or European. Because Mr. Bristow claims an office, which is his right and his freehold as long as the company chooses, Mr. Hastings accuses him of being an accomplice with the court of directors in a conspiracy against him; and because, after long delays, he had presented an humble

petition to have the court of directors' orders in his favor carried into execution, "he says, he has erected himself into a tribunal of justice; that he has arraigned the council for disobedience of orders, passed judgment upon them, and condemned or acquitted them as their magistrate and superior.”

Let us suppose his majesty to have been pleased to appoint any one to an office in the gift of the crown, what should we think of the person whose business it was to execute the king's commands, if he should say to the person appointed, when he claimed his office, you shall not have it, you assume to be my superior, and you disgrace and dishonor me. Good God! my lords, where was this language learned; in what country, and in what barbarous nation of Hottentots was this jargon picked up? For there is no Eastern court that I ever heard of, (and I believe I have been as conversant with the manners and customs of the East as most persons, whose business has not directly led them into that country,) where such conduct would have been tolerated. A bashaw, if he should be ordered by the Grand Seignor, to with his office, puts the letter upon his head, immediately follows.

invest another and obedience

But the obedience of a barbarous magistrate should not be compared to the obedience which a British subject owes to the laws of his country. Mr. Hastings receives an order, which he should have instantly obeyed. He is reminded of this by the person, who suffers from his disobedience; and this proves that person to be possessed of too independent a spirit. Aye, my lords, here is the grievance-no man can dare show in India an independent spirit. It is this, and not his having shown such a contempt of their authority, not his having shown himself so wretched an advocate for his own cause, and so bad a negotiator for his own interest, that makes him unfit to be trusted with the guardianship of their honor, the execution of their measures, and to be their confidential manager and negotiator with the princes of India.

But, my lords, what is this want of skill, which Mr. Bris

tow has shown in negotiating his own affairs? Mr. Hastings will inform us. He should have pocketed the letter of the court of directors; he should never have made the least mention of it; he should have come to my banyan, Cantoo Baboo; he should have offered him a bribe upon the occasion. That would have been the way to succeed with me, who am a public spirited taker of bribes and nuzzeers. But this base fool-this man, who is but a vile negotiator for his own interest, has dared to accept the patronage of the court of directors. He should have secured the protection of Cantoo Baboo, their more efficient rival. This would have been the But this man, it seems

skilful mode of doing the business. had not only shown himself an unskilful negotiator;-he had likewise afforded evidence of his want of integrity. And what is this evidence? His having "enabled himself to become the principal in such a competition." That is to say, he had, by his meritorious conduct in the service of his masters, the directors, obtained their approbation and favor, Mr. Hastings then contemptuously adds, "and for the test of his abilities, I appeal to the letter which he has dared to write to the board, and which, I am ashamed to say, we have suffered." Whatever that letter may be, I will venture to say there is not a word or syllable in it that tastes of such insolence and arbitrariness, with regard to the servants of the company, his fellow servants; of such audacious rebellion, with regard to the laws of his country, as are contained in this minute of Mr. Hastings.

tow.

But, my lords, why did he choose to have Mr. Middleton appointed resident? Your lordships have not seen Mr. BrisYou have only heard of him as a humble suppliant, to have the orders of the company obeyed but you have seen Mr. Middleton. You know that Mr. Middleton is a good man to keep a secret: I describe him no further. You know what qualifications Mr. Hastings requires in a savorite ; you also know why he was turned out of his employment, with the approbation of the court of directors; that it was

principally because, when resident in Oude, he positively, audaciously, and rebelliously refused to lay before the council the correspondence with the country powers. He says he gave it up to Mr. Hastings; whether he has or has not destroyed it we know not; all we know of it is, that it is not found to this hour. We cannot even find Mr. Middleton's trunk, though Mr. Jonathan Scott did at last produce his. The whole of the Persian correspondence, during Mr. Middleton's residence, was refused, as I have said, to the board at Calcutta and to the court of directors; was refused to the legal authorities; and Mr. Middleton, for that very refusal, was again appointed by Mr. Hastings to supersede Mr. Bristow, removed without a pretence of offence; he received, I say, this appointment from Mr. Hastings, as a reward for that servile compliance, by which he dissolved every tie between himself and his legal masters.

The matter being now brought to a simple issue, whether the governor-general is or is not bound to obey his superiors, I shall here leave it with your lordships, and I have only to beg your lordships will remark the course of events as they follow each other; keeping in mind that the prisoner at your bar declared Mr. Bristow to be a man of suspected integrity, on account of his independence, and deficient in ability, because he did not know how best to promote his own interest.

I must here state to your lordships, that it was the duty of the resident to transact the money concerns of the company, as well as its political negotiations; you will now see how Mr. Hastings divided that duty, after he became apprehensive that the court of directors might be inclined to assert their own authority, and to assert it in a proper manner, which they so rarely did. When, therefore, his passion had cooled, when his resentment of those violent indignities, which had been offered to him, namely, the indignity of being put in mind, that he had any superior under heaven, (for I know of no other,) he adopts the expedient of dividing the residency into two offices; he makes a fair compromise between himself and the directors.

He appoints Mr. Middleton to the manangement of the money concerns, and Mr. Bristow to that of the political affairs. Your lordships see, that Mr. Bristow, upon whom he had fixed the disqualification for political affairs, was the very person appointed to that department; and to Mr. Middleton, the man of his confidence, he gives the management of the money transactions. He discovers plainly where his heart was; for where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. This private agent, this stifler of correspondence, a man whose costive retention discovers no secret committed to him, and whose slippery memory is subject to a diarrhoea, which permits every thing he did know to escape; this very man he places in a situation where his talents could only be useful for concealment, and where concealment could only be used to cover fraud; while Mr. Bristow, who was by his official engagement responsible to the company for fair and clear accounts, was appointed superintendent of political affairs, an office for which Mr. Hastings declared he was totally unfit.

My lords, you will judge of the designs which the prisoner had in contemplation, when he dared to commit this act of rebellion against the company; you will see that it could not have been any other than getting the money transactions of Oude into his own hands. The presumption of a corrupt motive is here as strong as, I believe, it possibly can be.

The next point, to which I have to direct your lordships' attention, is that part of the prisoner's conduct in this matter, by which he exposed the nakedness of the company's authority to the native powers. You would imagine that after the first dismissal of Mr. Bristow, Mr. Hastings would have done with him for ever, that nothing could have induced him again to bring forward a man, who had dared to insult him, a man who had shown an independent spirit, a man who had dishonored the council, and insulted his masters, a man of doubtful integrity, and convicted unfitness for office. But, my lords, in the face of all this, he afterwards sends this very man, with undivided authority, into the country as sole resident: