tages, and guard against probable evils, are all that your administration can faithfully promise to perform for your service, with their united labors most diligently exerted. They cannot look back without sacrificing the objects of their immediate duty, which are those of your interest, to endless researches, which can produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at home."

My lords, you see here that after admitting that he has promised to the court of directors to do what they ordered him to do, (and he had promised to make a radical reform in their whole service, and to cure those abuses which they have stated,) he declares, that he will not execute them; he pleads a variety of other occupations; but as to that great fundamental grievance he was appointed to eradicate, he declares he will not even attempt it. Why did you promise? it naturally occurs to ask him that question. "Why," says he, "you will readily perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations, since it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I known my inability to perform them." This is a kind of argument that belongs to Mr. Hastings exclusively. Most other people would say, You may judge of the sincerity of my promises by my zeal in the performance; but he says, you may judge of the sincerity of my promises, because I would not promise if I had not thought I should be able to perform. It runs in this ridiculous circle. I promised to obey the court of directors; therefore I knew that I could obey them; but I could not obey them, therefore I was absolved from my promise, and did not attempt to obey them. In fact there is not so much as one grievance or abuse in the country, that he reformed-and this was systematical in Mr. Hastings's conduct; that he was resolved to connive at the whole of the iniquities of the service, because he was resolved that every one of those existing iniquities should be practised by himself. But, says he, the reforma

tion required can produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at home. This he gives you as a reason why he will not prosecute the inquiry into abuses abroad -because he is afraid that you should punish him at home for doing his duty abroad—that it will expose him to malevolence at home; and therefore to avoid being subject to malevolence at home, he would not do his duty abroad.

He follows this with something that is perfectly extraordinary; he desires, instead of doing his duty, (which he declares it is impossible to do,) that he may be invested with an arbitrary power. I refer your lordships to pages 2827, 2828, and 2829 of the printed minutes, where you will find the system of his government to be formed upon a resolution not to use any one legal means of punishing corruption, or for the prevention of corruption; all that he desires is to have an absolute arbitrary power over the servants of the company. There you will see, that arbitrary power for corrupt purposes over the servants of the company is the foundation of every part of his whole conduct. Remark what he says here; and then judge whether these inferences are to be eluded by any chicane.

"In the charge of oppression, although supported by the cries of the people and the most authentic representations, it is yet impossible, in most cases, to obtain legal proofs of it; and unless the discretionary power, which I have recommended, be somewhere lodged, the assurance of impunity from any formal inquiry will baffle every order of the board; as, on the other hand, the fear of the consequences will restrain every man within the bounds of his duty, if he knows himself liable to suffer by the effects of a single control."

My lords, you see two things most material for you to consider in the judgment of this great cause, which is the cause of nations. The first thing for you to consider is the decla

ration of the culprit at your bar, that a person may be pursued by the cries of a whole people; that documents, the most authentic and satisfactory, but deficient in technical form, may be produced against him; in short, that he may be guilty of the most enormous crimes, and yet that legal proofs may be wanting. This shows you how seriously you ought to consider, before you reject any proof upon the idea that is not technical legal proof. To this assertion of Mr. Hastings I oppose, however, the opinion of a gentleman who sits near his side, Mr. Sumner, which is much more probable.

Mr. Hastings says, that the power of the council is not effectual against the inferior servants, that is, too weak to coerce them. With much more truth Mr. Sumner has said in his minute, you might easily coerce the inferior servants; but that the dread of falling upon persons in high stations discourages and puts an end to complaint-I quote the recorded authority of the gentleman near him, as being of great weight, in the affairs of the company, to prove, what is infinitely more probable, the falsehood of Mr. Hastings's assertion, that an inferior servant cannot be coerced; and that they must riot, with impunity, in the spoils of the people.

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But we will go to a much more serious part of the business; after desiring arbitrary power in this letter, he desires a perpetuation of it. And here he has given you a description of a bad governor, to which I must call your attention, as your lordships will find it, in every part of his proceeding, to be exactly applicable to himself and to his own govern

ment.

"The first command of a state, so extensive as that of Bengal, is not without opportunities of private emoluments; and although the allowance which your bounty has liberally provided for your servants may be reasonably expected to fix the bounds of their desires, yet you will find it extremely

difficult to restrain men from profiting by other means, who look upon their appointment as the measure of a day, and who, from the uncertainty of their condition, see no room for any acquisition but of wealth, since reputation and the consequences which follow the successful conduct of great affairs are only to be attained in a course of years. Under such circumstances, however rigid your orders may be, or however supported, I am afraid that, in most instances, they will produce no other fruits than either avowed disobedience, or the worst extreme of falsehood and hypocrisy. These are not the principles which should rule the conduct of men, whom you have constituted the guardians of your property, and checks on the morals and fidelity of others. The care of self-preservation will naturally suggest the necessity of seizing the opportunity of present power, when the duration of it is considered as limited to the usual term of three years, and of applying it to the provision of a future independency; therefore every renewal of this term is liable to prove a reiterated oppression. It is perhaps owing to the causes which I have described, and a proof of their existence, that this appointment has been for some years past so eagerly solicited, and so easily resigned. There are yet other inconveniences attendant on this habit, and perhaps an investigation of them all would lead to endless discoveries. Every man, whom your choice has honored with so distinguished a trust, seeks to merit approbation, and acquire an eclat by innovations, for which the wild scene before him affords ample and justifiable occasion."

You see, my lords, he has stated that, if a governor is appointed to hold his office only for a short time, the consequence would be, either an avowed disobedience, or, what is worse, extreme falsehood and hypocrisy. Your lordships know that this man has held his office for a long time, and yet his disobedience has been avowed, and his hypocrisy and his falsehood have been discovered, and have been proved to

your lordships in the course of this trial. You see this man has declared what are the principles which should rule the conduct of men, whom you have constituted the guardians of your property, and checks upon the morals and fidelity of others. Mr. Hastings tells you himself directly what his duty was; he tells you himself, and he pronounces his own condemnation, what was expected from him, namely, that he should give a great example himself, and be a check and guardian of the fidelity of all that are under him. He declares at the end of this letter, that a very short continuance in their service would enable him to make a fortune up to the height of his desire. He has since thought proper to declare to you, that he is a beggar and undone, notwithstanding all his irregular resources, in that very service. I have read this letter to your lordships, that you may contrast it with the conduct of the prisoner, as stated by us and proved by the evidence we have adduced. We have stated and proved, that Mr. Hastings did enter upon a systematic connivance at the peculation of the company's servants-that he refused to institute any check whatever for the purpose of preventing corruption; and that he carried into execution no one measure of government, agreeably to the positive and solemn engagements, into which he had entered with the directors. We therefore charge him not only with his own corruptions, but with a systematic, premeditated corruption of the whole service, from the time when he was appointed, in the beginning of the year 1772, down to the year 1785, when he left it. He never attempted to detect any one single abuse whatever; he never endeavored once to put a stop to any corruption, in any man, black or white, in any way whatever. And thus he has acted in a government, of which he himself declares the nature to be such, that it is almost impossible so to detect misconduct as to give legal evidence of it, though a man should be declared, by the cries of the whole people, to be guilty.

My lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the company's