The first person that occurred to Mr. Hastings was Munny Begum; and he gave her, not out of that part of the Nabob's allowance which was to support the seraglio, but out of the allowance of this very magistrate, just as if such a thing had been done here out of the salary of a Lord Chancellor or a Lord Chief-Justice,—out of these two lacs and a half of rupees, that is, about twenty-four or twenty-five thousand pounds a year, he ordered an allowance to be made to Munny Begum of 72,000 rupees per annum, or 7,200l. a year; for the Nabob's own mother, whom he thrust, as usual, into a subordinate situation, he made an allowance of 3,000l.; to the Sudder ul Huk Khan, which is, translated into English, the Lord Chief-Justice, he allowed the same sum that he did to the dancing-girl, (which was very liberal in him, and I am rather astonished to find it,) namely, 7,200l. a year. And who do you think was the next public officer he appointed? It was the Rajah Gourdas, the son of Nundcomar, and whose testimony he has attempted both before and since this occasion to weaken. To him, however, he gave an employment of 6,000l. a year, as if to make through the son some compensation to the manes of the father. And in this manner he distributes, with a wild and liberal profusion, between magistrates and dancing-girls, the whole spoil of Mahomed Reza Khan, notwithstanding the Company's direct and positive assurance given to him. Everything was done, at the same time, to put, as it was before, into the hands of this dancing-girl the miserable Nabob's whole family; and that the fund for corruption might be large enough, he did not take the money for this dancing-girl out of the Nabob's separate revenue, of which he and the dancing-girl had the private disposal between them.

Now upon what pretence did he do all this? The Nabob had represented to Mr. Hastings that he was now of age,—that he was an independent, sovereign prince,—that, being independent and sovereign in his situation, and being of full age, he had a right to manage his own concerns himself; and therefore he desired to be admitted to that management. And, indeed, my Lords, ostensibly, and supposing him to have been this independent prince, and that the Company had no authority or had never exercised any authority over him through Mr. Hastings, there might be a good deal said in favor of this request. But what was the real state of the case? The Nabob was a puppet in the hands of Mr. Hastings and Munny Begum; and you will find, upon producing the correspondence, that he confesses that she was the ultimate object and end of this request.

I think this correspondence, wherein a son is made to petition, in his own name, for the elevation of a dancing-girl, his step-mother, above himself and everybody else, will appear to your Lordships such a curiosity as, I believe, is not to be found in the state correspondence of the whole world. The Nabob begins thus:—"The excellency of that policy by which her Highness the Begum" (meaning Munny Begum) "(may her shadow be far extended!) formerly, during the time of her administration, transacted the affairs of the nizamut in the very best and most advantageous manner, was, by means of the delusions of enemies disguised under the appearance of friends, hidden from me. Having lately seriously reflected on my own affairs, I am convinced that it was the effect of maternal affection, was highly proper, and for my interest,—and that, except the said Begum is again invested with the administration, the regulation and prosperity of this family, which is in fact her own, cannot be effected. For this cause, from the time of her suspension until now, I have passed my time, and do so still, in great trouble and uneasiness. As all affairs, and particularly the happiness and prosperity of this family, depend on your pleasure, I now trouble you, in hopes that you, likewise concurring in this point, will be so kind as to write in fit and proper terms to her Highness the Begum, that she will always, as formerly, employ her authority in the administration of the nizamut and the affairs of this family."

This letter, my Lords, was received upon the 23d of August; and your Lordships may observe two things in it: first, that, some way or other, this Nabob had been (as the fact was) made to express his desire of being released from his subjection to the Munny Begum, but that now he has got new lights, all the mists are gone, and he now finds that Munny Begum is not only the fittest person to govern him, but the whole country. This young man, whose incapacity is stated, and never denied, by Mr. Hastings, and by Lord Cornwallis, and by all the rest of the world who know him, begins to be charmed with the excellency of the policy of Munny Begum. Such is his violent impatience, such the impossibility of his existing an hour but under the government of Munny Begum, that he writes again on the 25th of August, (he had really the impatience of a lover,) and within five days afterwards writes again,—so impatient, so anxious and jealous is this young man to be put under the government of an old dancing-woman. He is afraid lest Mr. Hastings should imagine that some sinister influence had prevailed upon him in so natural and proper a request. He says, "Knowing it for my interest and advantage that the administration of the affairs of the nizamut should be restored to her Highness the Munny Begum, I have already troubled you with my request, that, regarding my situation with an eye of favor, you will approve of this measure. I am credibly informed that some one of my enemies, from selfish views, has, for the purpose of oversetting this measure, written you that the said Begum procured from me by artifice the letter I wrote you on this subject. This causes me the greatest astonishment. Please to consider, that artifice and delusion are confined to cheats and impostors, and can never proceed from a person of such exalted rank, who is the head and patron of all the family of the deceased Nabob, my father,—and that to be deluded, being a proof of weakness and folly, can have no relation to me, except the inventor of this report considers me as void of understanding, and has represented me to the gentlemen as a blockhead and an idiot. God knows how harshly such expressions appear to me; but, as the truth or falsehood has not yet been fully ascertained, I have therefore suspended my demand of satisfaction. Should it be true, be so kind as to inform me of it, that the person may be made to answer for it."

My Lords, here is a very proper demand. The Nabob is astonished at the suspicion, that such a woman as Munny Begum, whose trade in youth had been delusion, should be capable of deluding anybody. Astonishing it certainly was, that a woman who had been a deluder in youth should be suspected to be the same in old age, and that he, a young man, should be subject to her artifices. "They must suspect me to be a great blockhead," he says, "if a man of my rank is to be deluded." There he forgot that it is the unhappy privilege of great men to be cheated, to be deluded, much more than other persons; but he thought it so impossible in the case of Munny Begum, that he says, "Produce me the traitor that could suppose it possible for me to be deluded, when I call for this woman as the governor of the country. I demand satisfaction." I rather wonder that Mr. Hastings did not inform him who it was that had reported so gross and improbable a tale, and deliver him up to the fury of the Nabob.

Mr. Hastings is absolutely besieged by him; for he receives another letter upon the 3d of September. Here are four letters following one another quick as post expresses with horns sounding before them. "Oh, I die, I perish, I sink, if Munny Begum is not put into the government of the country!—I therefore desire to have her put into the government of the country, and that you will not keep me longer in this painful suspense, but will be kindly pleased to write immediately to the Munny Begum, that she take on herself the administration of the affairs of the nizamut, which is, in fact, her own family, without the interference of any other person whatever: by this you will give me complete satisfaction." Here is a correspondence more like an amorous than a state correspondence. What is this man so eager about, what in such a rage about, that he cannot endure the smallest delay of the post with common patience? Why, lest this old woman (who is not his mother, and with whom he had no other tie of blood) should not be made mistress of himself and the whole country! However, in a very few months afterwards he himself is appointed by Mr. Hastings to the government; and you may easily judge by the preceding letters who was to govern. It would be an affront to your Lordships' judgment to attempt to prove who was to govern, after he had desired to put the whole government of affairs into the hands of Munny Begum.

Now, Munny Begum having obtained this salary, and being invested with this authority, and made in effect the total and entire governor of the country, as I have proved by the Nabob's letters, let us see the consequences of it; and then I desire to know whether your Lordships can believe that in all this haste, which, in fact, is Mr. Hastings's haste and impatience, (for we shall prove that the Nabob never did or could take a step but by his immediate orders and directions,)—whether your Lordships can believe that Mr. Hastings would incur all the odium attending such transactions, unless he had some corrupt consideration.

My Lords, very soon after these appointments were made, consisting of Munny Begum at the head of the affairs, the Lord Chief-Justice under her, and under her direction, and Rajah Gourdas as steward of the household, the first thing we hear is, just what your Lordships expect to hear upon such a case, that this unfortunate chief-justice, who was a man undoubtedly of but a poor, low disposition, but, I believe, a perfectly honest, perfectly well-intentioned man, found it absolutely impossible for him to execute his office under the direction of Munny Begum; and accordingly, in the month of September following, he sends a complaint to Mr. Hastings, "that certain bad men had gained an ascendency over the Nabob's temper, by whose instigation he acts." After complaining of the slights he receives from the Nabob, he adds, "Thus they cause the Nabob to treat me, sometimes with indignity, at others with kindness, just as they think proper to advise him: their view is, that, by compelling me to displeasure at such unworthy treatment, they may force me either to relinquish my station, or to join with them, and act by their advice, and appoint creatures of their recommendation to the different offices, from which they might draw profit to themselves." This is followed by another letter, in which he shows who those corrupt men were that had gained the ascendency over the Nabob's temper,—namely, the eunuchs of Munny Begum: one of them her direct instrument in bribery with Mr. Hastings. What you would expect from such a state of things accordingly happened. Everything in the course of justice was confounded; all official responsibility destroyed; and nothing but a scene of forgery, peculation, and knavery of every kind and description prevailed through the country, and totally disturbed all order and justice in it. He says, "The Begum's ministers, before my arrival, with the advice of their counsellors, caused the Nabob to sign a receipt, in consequence of which they received at two different times near fifty thousand rupees, in the name of the officers of the Adawlut, Foujdarry, &c., from the Company's circar; and having drawn up an account-current in the manner they wished, they got the Nabob to sign it, and then sent it to me." In the same letter he asserts "that these people have the Nabob entirely in their power."

My Lords, you see here Mr. Hastings enabling the corrupt eunuchs of this wicked old woman to draw upon the Company's treasury at their pleasure, under forged papers of the Nabob, for just such moneys as they please, under the name and pretence of giving it to the officers of justice, but which they distribute among themselves as they think fit. This complaint was soon followed by another, and they furnish, first, the strongest presumptive proof of the corrupt motives of Mr. Hastings; and, secondly, they show the horrible mischievous effects of his conduct upon the country.

In consequence of the first complaint, Mr. Hastings directs this independent Nabob not to concern himself any longer with the Foujdarry. The Nabob, who had before declared that the superintendence of all the offices belonged to him, and was to be executed by himself, or under his orders, instantly obeys Mr. Hastings, and declares he will not interfere in the business of the courts any more. Your Lordships will observe further that the complaint is not against the Nabob, but against the creatures and the menial servants of Munny Begum: and yet it is the Nabob he forbids to interfere in this business; of the others he takes no notice; and this is a strong proof of the corrupt dealings of Mr. Hastings with this woman. When the whole country was fallen into confusion under the administration of this woman, and under her corrupt ministers, men base-born and employed in the basest offices, (the men of the household train of the women of rank in that country are of that description,) he writes to the Nabob again, and himself confesses the mischiefs that had arisen from his corrupt arrangements.

"At your Excellency's request, I sent Sudder ul Huk Khan to take on him the administration of the affairs of the Adawlut and Foujdarry, and hoped by that means not only to have given satisfaction to your Excellency, but that through his abilities and experience these affairs would have been conducted in such manner as to have secured the peace of the country and the happiness of the people; and it is with the greatest concern I learn that this measure is so far from being attended with the expected advantages, that the affairs both of the Foujdarry and Adawlut are in the greatest confusion imaginable, and daily robberies and murders are perpetrated throughout the country. This is evidently owing to the want of a proper authority in the person appointed to superintend them. I therefore addressed your Excellency on the importance and delicacy of the affairs in question, and of the necessity of lodging full power in the hands of the person chosen to administer them. In reply to which your Excellency expressed sentiments coincident with mine. Notwithstanding which, your dependants and people, actuated by selfish and avaricious views, have by their interference so impeded the business as to throw the whole country into a state of confusion, from which nothing can retrieve it but an unlimited power lodged in the hands of the superintendent. I therefore request that your Excellency will give the strictest injunctions to all your dependants not to interfere in any manner with any matter relative to the affairs of the Adawlut and Foujdarry, and that you will yourself relinquish all interference therein, and leave them entirely to the management of Sudder ul Huk Khan. This is absolutely necessary to restore the country to a state of tranquillity."

My Lords, what evidence do we produce to your Lordships of the consequences of Mr. Hastings's corrupt measures? His own. He here gives you the state into which the country was thrown by the criminal interference of the wicked woman whom he had established in power, totally superseding the regular judicial authority of the country, and throwing everything into confusion. As usual, there is such irregularity in his conduct, and his crimes are so multiplied, that all the contrivances of ingenuity are unable to cover them. Now and then he comes and betrays himself; and here he confesses you his own weakness, and the effects of his own corruption: he had appointed Munny Begum to this office of power, he dare not say a word to her upon her abuse of it, but he lays the whole upon the Nabob. When the Chief-Justice complains that these crimes were the consequence of Munny Begum's interference, and were committed by her creatures, why did he not say to the Nabob, "The Begum must not interfere; the Begum's eunuchs must not interfere"? He dared not: because that woman had concealed all the bribes but one from public notice to gratify him; she and Yatibar Ali Khan, her minister, who had the principal share in this destruction of justice and perversion of all the principal functions of government, had it in their power to discover the whole. Mr. Hastings was obliged, in consequence of that concealment, to support her and to support him. Every evil principle was at work. He bought a mercenary silence to pay the same back to them. It was a wicked silence, the concealment of their common guilt. There was at once a corrupt gratitude operating mutually by a corrupt influence on both, and a corrupt fear influencing the mind of Mr. Hastings, which did not permit him to put an end to this scene of disorder and confusion, bought at the expense of twenty-four thousand pounds a year to the Company. You will hereafter see what use he makes of the evidence of Yatibar Ali Khan, and of this woman, for concealing their guilt.

Your Lordships will observe that the virtuous majority, whose reign was but short, and two of whom died of grief and vexation under the impediments which they met with from the corruptions and oppositions of Mr. Hastings, (their indirect murderer,—for it is well known to the world that their hearts were thus broken,) put their conduct out of all suspicion. For they ordered an exact account to be kept by Mahomed Reza Khan,—though, certainly, if any person in the country could be trusted, he, upon his character, might; but they did not trust him, because they knew the Company did not suffer them to trust any man: they ordered an exact account to be kept by him of the Nabob's expenses, which finally must be the Company's expenses; they ordered the account to be sent down yearly, to be controlled, if necessary, whilst the means of control existed.—What was Mr. Hastings's conduct? He did not give the persons whom he appointed any order to produce any account, though their character and circumstances were such as made an account ten thousand times more necessary from them than from those from whom it had been in former times by the Company strictly exacted. So that his not ordering any account to be given of the money that was to be expended leaves no doubt that the appointment of Munny Begum was in pursuance of his old system of bribery, and that he maintained her in office, to the subversion of public justice, for the purpose of robbing, and of continuing in the practice of robbing, the country.

But though this continued longer than was for the good of the country, yet it did not continue absolutely and relatively long; because the Court of Directors, as soon as they heard of this iniquitous appointment, which glared upon them in all the light of its infamy, immediately wrote the strongest, the most decided, and the most peremptory censure upon him, attributing his acts, every one of them, to the same causes to which I attribute them. As a proof that the Court of Directors saw the thing in the very light in which I represent it to your Lordships, and indeed in which every one must see it, you will find that they reprobate all his idle excuses,—that they reprobate all the actors in the scene,—that they consider everything to have been done, not by the Nabob, but by himself,—that the object of the appointment of Munny Begum was money, and that the consequence of that appointment was the robbery of the Nabob's treasury. "We by no means approve your late proceedings, on the application of the Nabob Mobarek ul Dowlah for the removal of the Naib Subahdar. The requisition of Mobarek ul Dowlah was improper and unfriendly; because he must have known that the late appointment of Mahomed Reza Khan to the office of Naib Subahdar had been marked with the Company's special approbation, and that the Court of Directors had assured him of their favor so long as a firm attachment to the Company's interest and a proper discharge of the duties of his station should render him worthy of their protection. We therefore repeat our declaration, that to require the dismission of a prime-minister thus circumstanced, without producing the smallest proof of his infidelity to the Company, or venturing to charge him with one instance of maladministration in the discharge of his public duty, was improper and inconsistent with the friendship subsisting between the Nabob of Bengal and the Company." And further on they say,—"The Nabob having intimated that he had repeatedly stated the trouble and uneasiness which he had suffered from the naibship of the nizamut being vested in Mahomed Reza Khan, we observe one of the members of your board desired the Nabob's repeated letters on the subject might be read, but this reasonable request was overruled, on a plea of saving the board's time, which we can by no means admit as a sufficient objection. The Nabob's letters of the 25th and 30th August, of the 3d September and 17th November, leave us no doubt of the true design of this extraordinary business being to bring forward Munny Begum, and again to invest her with improper power and influence, notwithstanding our former declaration, that so great a part of the Nabob's allowance had been embezzled or misapplied under her superintendence."

At present I do not think it necessary, because it would be doing more than enough, it would be slaying the slain, to show your Lordships what Mr. Hastings's motives were in acting against the sense of the East India Company, appointed by an act of Parliament to control him,—that he did it for a corrupt purpose, that all his pretences were false and fraudulent, and that he had his own corrupt views in the whole of the proceeding. But in the statement which I have given of this matter, I beg your Lordships to observe the instruments with which Mr. Hastings acts. The great men of that country, and particularly the Subahdar himself, the Nabob, are and is in so equivocal a situation, that it afforded him two bolting-holes, by which he is enabled to resist the authority of the Company, and exercise an arbitrary authority of his own: for, though the Nabob has the titles of high sovereignty, he is the lowest of all dependants; he appears to be the master of the country,—he is a pensioner of the Company's government.

When Mr. Hastings wants him to obey and answer his corrupt purposes, he finds him in the character of a pensioner: when he wants his authority to support him in opposition to the authority of the Company, immediately he invests him with high sovereign powers, and he dare not execute the orders of the Company for fear of doing some act that will make him odious in the eyes of God and man. We see how he appointed all officers for him, and forbade his interference in all affairs. When the Company see the impropriety and the guilt of these acts, and order him to rescind them, and appoint again Mahomed Reza Khan, he declares he will not, that he cannot do it in justice, but that he will consent to send him the order of the Company, but without backing it with any order of the board: which, supposing even there had been no private communication, was, in other words, commanding him to disobey it. So this poor man, who a short time before was at the feet of Mr. Hastings, whom Mr. Hastings declared to be a pageant, and swore in a court of justice that he was but a pageant, and followed that affidavit with long declarations in Council that he was a pageant in sovereignty, and ought in policy ever to be held out as such,—this man he sets up in opposition to the Company, and refuses to appoint Mahomed Reza Khan to the office which was guarantied to him by the express faith of the Company, pledged to his support. Will any man tell me that this resistance, under such base, though plausible pretences, could spring from any other cause than a resolution of persisting systematically in his course of corruption and bribery through Munny Begum?

But there is another circumstance that puts this in a stronger light. He opposes the Nabob's mock authority to the authority of the Company, and leaves Mahomed Reza Khan unemployed, because, as he says, he cannot in justice execute orders from the Company (though they are his undoubted masters) contrary to the rights of the Nabob. You see what the rights of the Nabob were: the rights of the Nabob were, to be governed by Munny Begum and her scandalous ministers. But, however, we now see him exalted to be an independent sovereign; he defies the Company at the head of their armies and their treasury; that name that makes all India shake was defied by one of its pensioners. My Lords, human greatness is an unstable thing. This man, so suddenly exalted, was as soon depressed; and the manner of his depression is as curious as that of his exaltation by Mr. Hastings, and will tend to show you the man most clearly.

Mr. Francis, whose conduct all along was directed by no other principles than those which were in conformity with the plan adopted by himself and his virtuous colleagues, namely, an entire obedience to the laws of his country, and who constantly had opposed Mr. Hastings, upon principles of honor, and principles of obedience to the authority of the Company under which he acted, had never contended for any one thing, in any way, or in any instance, but obedience to them, and had constantly asserted that Mahomed Reza Khan ought to be put into employment. Mr. Hastings as constantly opposed him; and the reason he gave for it was, that it was against the direct rights of the Nabob, and that they were rights so sacred that they could not be infringed even by the sovereign authority of the Company ordering him to do it. He had so great an aversion to the least subtraction of the Nabob's right, that, though expressly commanded by the Court of Directors, he would not suffer Mahomed Reza Khan to be invested with his office under the Company's authority. The Nabob was too sovereign, too supreme, for him to do it. But such is the fate of human grandeur, that a whimsical event reduced the Nabob to his state of pageant again, and made him the mere subject of—you will see whom. Mr. Hastings found he was so embarrassed by his disobedience to the spirit of the orders of the Company, and by the various wild projects he had formed, as to make it necessary for him, even though he had a majority in the Council, to gain over at any price Mr. Francis. Mr. Francis, frightened by the same miserable situation of affairs, (for this happened at a most dangerous period,—the height of the Mahratta war,) was willing likewise to give up his opposition to Mr. Hastings, to suspend the execution of many rightful things, and to concede them to the public necessity. Accordingly he agreed to terms with Mr. Hastings. But what was the price of that concession? Any base purpose, any desertion of public duty? No: all that he desired of Mr. Hastings was, that he should obey the orders of the Company; and among other acts of the obedience required was this, that Mahomed Reza Khan should be put into his office.

You have heard how Mr. Hastings opposed the order of the Company, and on what account he opposed it. On the 1st of September he sent an order to the Nabob, now become his subject, to give up this office to Mahomed Reza Khan: an act which he had before represented as a dethroning of the Nabob. The order went on the 1st of September, and on the 3d this great and mighty prince, whom all earth could not move from the assertion of his rights, gives them all up, and Mahomed Reza Khan is invested with them. So there all his pretences were gone. It is plain that what had been done before was for Munny Begum, and that what he now gave up was from necessity: and it shows that the Nabob was the meanest of his servants; for in truth he ate his daily bread out of the hands of Mr. Hastings, through Munny Begum.

Mahomed Reza Khan was now invested again with his office; but such was the treachery of Mr. Hastings, that, though he wrote to the Nabob that this was done in consequence of the orders of the Company, he did clandestinely, according to his usual mode, assure the Nabob that Mahomed Reza Khan should not hold the place longer than till he heard from England. He then wrote him another letter, that he should hold it no longer than while he submitted to his present necessity, (thus giving up to his colleague what he refused to the Company,) and engaged, privately, that he would dismiss Mahomed Reza Khan again. And accordingly, the moment he thought Mr. Francis was not in a condition to give him trouble any longer, that moment he again turned out Mahomed Reza Khan from that general superintendence of affairs which the Company gave him, and deposed him as a minister, leaving him only a very confined authority as a magistrate.

All these changes, no less than four great revolutions, if I may so call them, were made by Mr. Hastings for his own corrupt purposes. This is the manner in which Mr. Hastings has played with the most sacred objects that man ever had a dealing with: with the government, with the justice, with the order, with the dignity, with the nobility of a great country: he played with them to satisfy his own wicked and corrupt purposes through the basest instrument.

Now, my Lords, I have done with these presumptions of corruption with Munny Begum, and have shown that it is not a slight crime, but that it is attended with a breach of public faith, with a breach of his orders, with a breach of the whole English government, and the destruction of the native government, of the police, the order, the safety, the security, and the justice of the country,—and that all these are much concerned in this cause. Therefore the Commons stand before the face of the world, and say, We have brought a cause, a great cause, a cause worthy the Commons of England to prosecute, and worthy the Lords to judge and determine upon.

I have now nothing further to state than what the consequences are of Mr. Hastings taking bribes,—that Mr. Hastings's taking of bribes is not only his own corruption, but the incurable corruption of the whole service. I will show, first, that he was named in 1773 to put an end to that corruption. I will show that he did not,—that he knowingly and willingly connived at it,—and that that connivance was the principal cause of all the disorders that have hitherto prevailed in that country. I will show you that he positively refused to obey the Company's order to inquire into and to correct the corruptions that prevailed in that country; next, that he established an avowed system of connivance, in order to gain over everything that was corrupt in the country; and that, lastly, to secure it, he gave up all the prosecutions, and enervated and took away the sole arm left to the Company for the assertion of authority and the preservation of good morals and purity in their service.

My Lords, here is a letter, in the year 1773, in which the Court of Directors had, upon his own representation, approved some part of his conduct. He is charmed with their approbation; he promises the greatest things; but I believe your Lordships will see, from the manner in which he proceeds at that very instant, that a more deliberate system, for not only being corrupt himself, but supporting corruption in others, never was exhibited in any public paper.

"While I indulge the pleasure which I receive from the past successes of my endeavors, I own I cannot refrain from looking back with a mixture of anxiety on the omissions by which I am sensible I may since have hazarded the diminution of your esteem. All my letters addressed to your Honorable Court, and to the Secret Committee, repeat the strongest promises of prosecuting the inquiries into the conduct of your servants which you had been pleased to commit particularly to my charge. 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 foreseen my inability to perform them. I find myself now under the disagreeable necessity of avowing that inability; at the same time I will boldly take upon me to affirm, that, on whomsoever you might have delegated that charge, and by whatever powers it might have been accompanied, it would have been sufficient to occupy the entire attention of those who were intrusted with it, and, even with all the aids of leisure and authority, would have proved ineffectual. I dare appeal to the public records, to the testimony of those who have opportunities of knowing me, and even to the detail which the public voice can report of the past acts of this government, that my time has been neither idly nor uselessly employed: yet such are the cares and embarrassments of this various state, that, although much may be done, much more, even in matters of moment, must necessarily remain neglected. To select from the miscellaneous heap which each day's exigencies present to our choice those points on which the general welfare of your affairs most essentially depends, to provide expedients for future advantages 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 interests, 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, this is the first man, I believe, that ever took credit for his sincerity from his breach of his promises. "I could not," he says, "have made these promises, if I had not thought that I could perform them. Now I find I cannot perform them, and you have in that non-performance and in that profession a security for my sincerity when I promised them." Upon this principle, any man who makes a promise has nothing to do afterwards, but to say that he finds himself (without assigning any particular cause for it) unable to perform it,—not only to justify himself for his non-performance, but to justify himself and claim credit for sincerity in his original profession. The charge was given him specially, and he promised obedience, over and over, upon the spot, and in the country, in which he was no novice, for he had been bred in it: it was his native country in one sense, it was the place of his renewed nativity and regeneration. Yet this very man, as if he was a novice in it, now says, "I promised you what I now find I cannot perform." Nay, what is worse, he declares no man could perform it, if he gave up his whole time to it. And lastly, he says, that the inquiry into these corruptions, even if you succeeded in it, would do more harm than good. Now was there ever an instance of a man so basely deserting a duty, and giving so base a reason for it? His duty was to put an end to corruption in every channel of government. It cannot be done. Why? Because it would expose our affairs to malignity and enmity, and end, perhaps, to our disadvantage. Not only will he connive himself, but he advises the Company to do it. For fear of what? For fear that their service was so abandoned and corrupt, that the display of the evil would tend more to their disreputation than all their attempts to reform it would tend to their service.

Mr. Hastings should naturally have imagined that the law was a resource in this desperate case of bribery. He tells you, that in "that charge of oppression, though they were supported by the cries of the people and the most authentic representations, it is yet impossible in most cases to obtain legal proofs." Here is a system of total despair upon the business, which I hope and believe is not a desperate one, and has not proved a desperate one, whenever a rational attempt has been made to pursue it. Here you find him corrupt, and you find, in consequence of that corruption, that he screens the whole body of corruption in India, and states an absolute despair of any possibility, by any art or address, of putting an end to it. Nay, he tells you, that, if corruption did not exist, if it was not connived at, that the India Company could not exist. Whether that be a truth or not I cannot tell; but this I know, that it is the most horrible picture that ever was made of any country. It might be said that these were excuses for omissions,—sins of omission he calls them. I will show that they were systematic, that Mr. Hastings did uniformly profess that he would connive at abuses, and contend that abuses ought to be connived at. When the whole mystery of the iniquity, in which he himself was deeply concerned, came to light,—when it appeared that all the Company's orders were contravened,—that contracts were given directly contrary to their orders, and upon principles subversive of their government, leading to all manner of oppression and ruin to the country,—what was Mr. Hastings's answer? "I must here remark, that the majority ... I had not the power of establishing it."[5] Then he goes on and states other cases of corruption, at every one of which he winks. Here he states another reason for his connivance. "Suppose again," (for he puts another supposition, and these suppositions are not hypotheses laid down for argument, but real facts then existing before the Council examining into grievances,)—"suppose again, that any person had benefited himself ... unprofitable discussion."[6]

Here is a direct avowal of his refusing to examine into the conduct of persons in the Council, even in the highest departments of government, and the best paid, for fear he should dissatisfy them, and should lose their votes, by discovering those peculations and corruptions, though he perfectly knew them. Was there ever, since the world began, any man who would dare to avow such sentiments, until driven to the wall? If he could show that he himself abhorred bribes, and kept at a distance from them, then he might say, "I connive at the bribes of others"; but when he acknowledges that he takes bribes, how can you doubt that he buys a corrupt confederacy, and puts an end to any hope through him of reformation of the abuses at Bengal? But your Lordships will see that he not only connived at abuse, but patronized it and supported it for his own political purposes; since he here confesses, that, if inquiry into it created him ill-humor, and produced him an opposition in Council, he sacrificed it to the power of the Company, and the constitution of their government. Did he so? The Company ordered him to prosecute those people, and their constitution required that they should be prosecuted. "No," says Mr. Hastings, "the conniving at it procures a majority of votes." The very thing that he bought was not worth half the price he paid for it. He was sent to reform corruptions, and, in order that he might reform corruptions, he winked at, countenanced, and patronized them, to get a majority of votes; and what was, in fact, a sacrifice to his own interest, ambition, and corruption, he calls a sacrifice to the Company. He puts, then, this alternative: "Either give everything into my hand, suffer me to go on, and have no control, or else I wink at every species of corruption." It is a remarkable and stupendous thing, that, when all the world was alarmed at the disorders of the Company, when that alarm occasioned his being sent out, and when, in consequence of that alarm, Parliament suspended the constitution of the Company, and appointed another government, Mr. Hastings should tell that Company that Parliament had done wrong, and that the person put at the head of that government was to wink at those abuses. Nay, what is more, not only does Mr. Hastings declare, upon general principles, that it was impossible to pursue all the delinquencies of India, and that, if possible to pursue them, mischief would happen from it, but your Lordships will observe that Mr. Hastings, in this business, during the whole period of the administration of that body which was sent out to inquire into and reform the corruptions of India, did not call one person to an account; nor, except Mr. Hastings, this day, has any one been called to an account, or punished for delinquency. Whether he will be punished or no, time will show. I have no doubt of your Lordships' justice, and of the goodness of our cause.

The table of the House of Commons groaned under complaints of the evils growing in India under this systematic connivance of Mr. Hastings. The Directors had set on foot prosecutions, to be conducted God knows how; but, such as they were, they were their only remedy; and they began to consider at last that these prosecutions had taken a long oblivious nap of many years; and at last, knowing that they were likely, in the year 1782, to be called to a strict account about their own conduct, the Court of Directors began to rouse themselves, and they write thus: "Having in several of our letters to you very attentively perused all the proceedings referred to in these paragraphs, relative to the various forgeries on the Company's treasuries, we lament exceedingly that the parties should have been so long in confinement without being brought to trial."

Here, my Lords, after justice had been asleep awhile, it revived. They directed two things: first, that those suits should be pursued; but whether pursued or not, that an account of the state of them should be given, that they might give orders concerning them.

Your Lordships see the orders of the Company. Did they not want to pursue and to revive those dormant prosecutions? They want to have a state of them, that they may know how to direct the future conduct of them with more effect and vigor than they had yet been pursued with. You will naturally imagine that Mr. Hastings did not obey their orders, or obeyed them languidly. No, he took another part. He says, "Having attentively read and weighed the arguments ... for withdrawing them."[7]

Thus he begins with the general principle of connivance; he directly avows he does it for a political purpose; and when the Company directs he shall proceed in the suits, instead of deferring to their judgment, he takes the judgment on himself, and says theirs is untenable; he directly discharges the prosecutions of the Company, supersedes the authority of his masters, and gives a general release to all the persons who were still suffering by the feeble footsteps of justice in that country. He gave them an act of indemnity, and that was the last of his acts.

Now, when I show the consequence of his bribery, the presumptions that arise from his own bribes, his attention to secure others from the punishment of theirs, and, when ordered to carry on a suit, his discharging it,—when we see all this, can we avoid judging and forming our opinions upon two grand points: first, that no man would proceed in that universal patronage of guilt, unless he was guilty himself; next, that, by a universal connivance for fourteen years, he is himself the cause and mainspring of all the evils, calamities, extortion, and bribery, that have prevailed and ravaged that country for so long a time? There is, indeed, no doubt either of his guilt, or of the consequences of it, by which he has extinguished the last expiring hope and glimpse that remained of procuring a remedy for India of the evils that exist in it.

I would mention, that, as a sort of postscript, when he could no longer put the government into the hands of that infamous woman, Munny Begum, he sent an amorous, sentimental letter to the Company, describing her miserable situation, and advising the Company to give her a pension of seventy-two thousand rupees a year, to maintain her. He describes her situation in such a moving way as must melt every heart. He supposes her to be reduced to want by the cruel orders of the Company, who retain from her money which they were never obliged to give her. This representation, which he makes with as much fairness as he represents himself to be in a state of the most miserable poverty and distress, he alone made to the Company, because his colleagues would not countenance him in it; and we find, upon looking over Lord Cornwallis's last examination into the whole state of this unhappy family, that this woman was able to lend to Mobarek ul Dowlah twenty thousand pounds. Mr. Hastings, however, could not avoid making this representation; because he knew, that, if he quitted the country without securing that woman, by giving her a hope that she could procure by his credit here that money which by his authority he had before procured for her, she might then make a discovery of all the corruption that had been carried on between them; and therefore he squanders away the treasures of the Company, in order to secure himself from any such detection, and to procure for himself razinamas and all those fine things. He knew that Munny Begum, that the whole seraglio, that all the country, whom he had put under the dominion of Sir John D'Oyly, that all those people might have made a discovery of all his corrupt proceedings; he therefore gets the Nabob to appoint Sir John D'Oyly his agent here, with a view of stopping his mouth, and by the hope of another 160,000l. a year to prevent his giving an account of the dilapidation and robbery that was made of the 160,000l. which had been left him.

* * * * *

I have now finished what I proposed to say relative to his great fund of bribery, in the first instance of it,—namely, the administration of justice in the country. There is another system of bribery which I shall state before my friends produce the evidence. He put up all the great offices of the country to sale; he makes use of the trust he had of the revenues in order to destroy the whole system of those revenues, and to bind them and make them subservient to his system of bribery: and this will make it necessary for your Lordships to couple the consideration of the charge of the revenues, in some instances, with that of bribery.

The next day your Lordships meet (when I hope I shall not detain you so long) I mean to open the second stage of his bribery, the period of discovery: for the first stage was the period of concealment. When he found his bribes could no longer be concealed, he next took upon him to discover them himself, and to take merit from them.

When I shall have opened the second scene of his peculation, and his new principles of it, when you see him either treading in old corruptions, and excelling the examples he imitated, or exhibiting new ones of his own, in which of the two his conduct is the most iniquitous, and attended with most evil to the Company, I must leave your Lordships to judge.

FOOTNOTES:

[2] Document wanting.

[3] Document wanting.

[4] Document wanting.

[5] Document wanting.

[6] Document wanting.

[7] Document wanting.



SPEECH

ON

THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.

THIRD DAY: TUESDAY, MAY 5, 1789.

My Lords,—Agreeably to your Lordships' proclamation, which I have just heard, and the duty enjoined me by the House of Commons, I come forward to make good their charge of high crimes and misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, Esquire, late Governor-General of Bengal, and now a prisoner at your bar.

My Lords, since I had last the honor of standing in this place before your Lordships, an event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent. My Lords, I have been disavowed by those who sent me here to represent them. My Lords, I have been disavowed in a material part of that engagement which I had pledged myself to this House to perform. My Lords, that disavowal has been followed by a censure. And yet, my Lords, so censured and so disavowed, and by such an authority, I am sent here again, to this the place of my offence, under the same commission, by the same authority, to make good the same charge, against the same delinquent.

My Lords, the situation is new and awful: the situation is such as, I believe, and I am sure, has nothing like it on the records of Parliament, nor, probably, in the history of mankind. My Lords, it is not only new and singular, but, I believe, to many persons, who do not look into the true interior nature of affairs, it may appear that it would be to me as mortifying as it is unprecedented. But, my Lords, I have in this situation, and upon the consideration of all the circumstances, something more to feed my mind with than mere consolation; because, my Lords, I look upon the whole of these circumstances, considered together, as the strongest, the most decisive, and the least equivocal proof which the Commons of Great Britain can give of their sincerity and their zeal in this prosecution. My Lords, is it from a mistaken tenderness or a blind partiality to me, that, thus censured, they have sent me to this place? No, my Lords, it is because they feel, and recognize in their own breasts, that active principle of justice, that zeal for the relief of the people of India, that zeal for the honor of Great Britain, which characterizes me and my excellent associates, that, in spite of any defects, in consequence of that zeal which they applaud, and while they censure its mistakes, and, because they censure its mistakes, do but more applaud, they have sent me to this place, instructed, but not dismayed, to pursue this prosecution against Warren Hastings, Esquire. Your Lordships will therefore be pleased to consider this, as I consider it, not as a thing honorable to me, in the first place, but as honorable to the Commons of Great Britain, in whose honor the national glory is deeply concerned; and I shall suffer myself with pleasure to be sacrificed, perhaps, in what is dearer to me than my life, my reputation, rather than let it be supposed that the Commons should for one moment have faltered in their duty. I, my Lords, on the one hand, feeling myself supported and encouraged, feeling protection and countenance from this admonition and warning which has been given to me, will show myself, on the other hand, not unworthy so great and distinguished a mark of the favor of the Commons,—a mark of favor not the consequence of flattery, but of opinion. I shall feel animated and encouraged by so noble a reward as I shall always consider the confidence of the Commons to be: the only reward, but a rich reward, which I have received for the toils and labors of a long life.

The Commons, then, thus vindicated, and myself thus encouraged, I shall proceed to make good the charge in which the honor of the Commons, that is, the national honor, is so deeply concerned. For, my Lords, if any circumstance of weakness, if any feebleness of nerve, if any yielding to weak and popular opinions and delusions were to shake us, consider what the situation of this country would be. This prosecution, if weakly conceived, ill digested, or intemperately pursued, ought never to have been brought to your Lordships' bar: but being brought to your Lordships' bar, the nation is committed to it, and the least appearance of uncertainty in our minds would disgrace us forever. Esto perpetua, has been said. To the glory of this nation, much more be it said, Esto perpetua; and I will say, that, as we have raised and exhibited a theatre of justice which has excited the admiration of all Europe, there would be a sort of lustre in our infamy, and a splendor in the disgrace that we should bring upon ourselves, if we should, just at that moment, turn that theatre of our glory into a spectacle of dishonor beyond what has ever happened to any country of the world.

The Commons of Great Britain, whilst willing to keep a strong and firm hand over all those who represent them in any business, do at the same time encourage them in the prosecution of it, by allowing them a just discretion and latitude wherever their own orders have not marked a distinction. I shall therefore go on with the more cheerful confidence, not only for the reasons that I have stated, but for another and material reason. I know and am satisfied, that, in the nobleness of your judgment, you will always make a distinction between the person that gives the order and the organ that is to execute it. The House of Commons know no such thing as indiscretion, imprudence, or impropriety: it is otherwise with their instruments. Your Lordships very well know, that, if you hear anything that shall appear to you to be regular, apt to bring forward the charge, just, prudent, cogent, you are to give it to the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled; if you should hear from me (and it must be from me alone, and not from any other member of the Committee) anything that is unworthy of that situation, that comes feeble, weak, indigested, or ill-prepared, you are to attribute that to the instrument. Your Lordships' judgment would do this without my saying it. But whilst I claim it on the part of the Commons for their dignity, I claim for myself the necessary indulgence that must be given to all weakness. Your Lordships, then, will impute it where you would have imputed it without my desire. It is a distinction you would naturally have made, and the rather because what is alleged by us at the bar is not the ground upon which you are to give judgment. If not only I, but the whole body of managers, had made use of any such expressions as I made use of,—even if the Commons of Great Britain in Parliament assembled, if the collective body of Parliament, if the voice of Europe, had used them,—if we had spoken with the tongues of men and angels, you, in the seat of judicature, are not to regard what we say, but what we prove; you are to consider whether the charge is well substantiated, and proof brought out by legal inference and argument. You know, and I am sure the habits of judging which your Lordships have acquired by sitting in judgment must better inform you than any other men, that the duties of life, in order to be well performed, must be methodized, separated, arranged, and harmonized in such a manner that they shall not clash with one another, but each have a department assigned and separated to itself. My Lords, in that manner it is that we, the prosecutors, have nothing to do with the principles which are to guide the judgment, that we have nothing to do with the defence of the prisoner. Your Lordships well know, that, when we come before you, you hear a party; that, when the accused come before you, you hear a party: that it is for you to doubt, and wait till you come to the close, before you decide; that it is for us, the prosecutors, to have decided before we came here. To act as prosecutors, we ought to have no doubt or hesitation, nothing trembling or quivering in our minds upon the occasion. We ought to be fully convinced of guilt, before we come to you. It is, then, our business to bring forward the proofs,—to enforce them with all the clearness, illustration, example, that we can bring forward,—that we are to show the circumstances that can aggravate the guilt,—that we are to go further, show the mischievous consequences and tendency of those crimes to society,—and that we are, if able so to do, to arouse and awaken in the minds of all that hear us those generous and noble sympathies which Providence has planted in the breasts of all men, to be the true guardians of the common rights of humanity. Your Lordships know that this is the duty of the prosecutors, and that therefore we are not to consider the defence of the party, which is wisely and properly left to himself; but we are to press the accusation with all the energy of which it is capable, and to come with minds perfectly convinced before an august and awful tribunal which at once tries the accuser and the accused.

Having stated thus much with respect to the Commons, I am to read to your Lordships the resolution which the Commons have come to upon this great occasion, and upon which I shall take the liberty to say a very few words.

My Lords, the Commons have resolved last night, and I did not see the resolution till this morning, "that no direction or authority was given by this House to the committee appointed to manage the impeachment against Warren Hastings, Esquire, to make any charge or allegation against the said Warren Hastings respecting the condemnation or execution of Nundcomar; and that the words spoken by the Right Honorable Edmund Burke, one of the said managers, videlicet, that he (meaning Mr. Hastings) murdered that man (meaning Nundcomar) by the hands of Sir Elijah Impey, ought not to have been spoken."

My Lords, this is the resolution of the House of Commons. Your Lordships well know and remember my having used such or similar words, and the end and purpose for which I used them. I owe a few words of explanation to the Commons of Great Britain, who attend in a committee of the whole House to be the observers and spectators of my conduct. I owe it to your Lordships, I owe it to this great auditory, I owe it to the present times and to posterity, to make some apology for a proceeding which has drawn upon me the disavowal of the House which I represent. Your Lordships will remember that this charge which I have opened to your Lordships is primarily a charge founded upon the evidence of the Rajah Nundcomar; and consequently I thought myself obliged, I thought it a part of my duty, to support the credit of that person, who is the principal evidence to support the direct charge that is brought before your Lordships. I knew that Mr. Hastings, in his anticipated defence before the House of Commons, had attempted to shake the credit of that witness. I therefore thought myself justified in informing your Lordships, and in warning him, that, if he did attempt to shake the credit of an important witness against him by an allegation of his having been condemned and executed for a forgery, I would endeavor to support his credit by attacking that very prosecution which brought on that condemnation and that execution; and that I did consider it, and would lay grounds before your Lordships to prove it, to be a murder committed, instead of a justification set up, or that ought to be set up.

Now, my Lords, I am ordered by the Commons no longer to persist in that declaration; and I, who know nothing in this place, and ought to know nothing in this place, but obedience to the Commons, do mean, when Mr. Hastings makes that objection (if he shall be advised to make it) against the credit of Rajah Nundcomar, not thus to support that credit; and therefore that objection to the credit of the witness must go unrefuted by me. My Lords, I must admit, perhaps against my private judgment, (but that is of no consideration for your Lordships, when opposed to the judgment of the House of Commons,) or, at least, not contest, that a first minister of state, in a great kingdom, who had the benefit of the administration, and of the entire and absolute command of a revenue of fifteen hundred thousand pounds a year, had been guilty of a paltry forgery in Calcutta; that this man, who had been guilty of this paltry forgery, had waited for his sentence and his punishment, till a body of English judges, armed with an English statute, came to Calcutta; and that this happened at the very happy nick and moment when he was accusing Mr. Hastings of the bribery with which we now in the name of the Commons charge him; that it was owing to an entirely fortuitous concurrence of circumstances, in which Mr. Hastings had no share, or that it was owing to something beyond this, something that is rather pious than fortuitous, namely, that, as Mr. Hastings tells you himself, "all persuasions of men were impressed with a superstitious belief that a fortunate influence directed all my actions to their destined ends." I, not being at that time infected with the superstition, and considering what I thought Mr. Hastings's guilt to be, and what I must prove it to be as well as I can, did not believe that Providence did watch over Mr. Hastings, so as in the nick of time, like a god in a machine, to come down to save him in the moment of his imminent peril and distress: I did not think so, but I must not say so.

But now, to show that it was not weakly, loosely, or idly, that I took up this business, or that I anticipated a defence which it was not probable for Mr. Hastings to make, (and I wish to speak to your Lordships in the first instance, but to the Commons in the next,) I will read part of Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons: it is in evidence before your Lordships. He says,—"My accuser" (meaning myself, then acting as a private member of Parliament) "charges me with 'the receipt of large sums of money, corruptly taken before the promulgation of the Regulating Act of 1773, contrary to my covenants with the Company, and with the receipt of very large sums taken since, in defiance of that law, and contrary to my declared sense of its provisions.' And he ushers in this charge in the following pompous diction: 'That in March, 1775, the late Rajah Nundcomar, a native Hindoo of the highest caste in his religion, and of the highest rank in society, by the offices which he had held under the country government, did lay before the Council an account of various sums of money,' &c. It would naturally strike every person ignorant of the character of Nundcomar, that an accusation made by a person of the highest caste in his religion and of the highest rank by his offices demanded particular notice, and acquired a considerable degree of credit, from a prevalent association of ideas that a nice sense of honor is connected with an elevated rank of life: but when this honorable House is informed that my accuser knew (though he suppressed the facts) that this person, of high rank and high caste, had forfeited every pretension to honor, veracity, and credit,—that there are facts recorded on the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, (independent of the forgery for which he suffered death,) of the most deliberate treachery to the state, for which he was confined, by the orders of the Court of Directors, to the limits of the town of Calcutta, in order to prevent his dangerous intrigues, and of having violated every principle of common honesty in private life,—I say, when this honorable House is acquainted it is from mutilated and garbled assertions, founded on the testimony of such an evidence, without the whole matter being fairly stated, I do hope and trust it will be sufficient for them to reject now these vague and unsupported charges, in like manner as they were before rejected by the Court of Directors and his Majesty's ministers, when they were first made by General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis.—I must here interrupt the course of my defence to explain on what grounds I employed or had any connection with a man of so flagitious a character as Nundcomar."

My Lords, I hope this was a good and reasonable ground for me to anticipate the defence which Mr. Hastings would make in this House,—namely, on the known, recognized, infamous character of Nundcomar, with regard to certain proceedings there charged at large, with regard to one forgery for which he suffered and two other forgeries with which Mr. Hastings charged him. I, who found that the Commons of Great Britain had received that very identical charge of Nundcomar, and given it to me in trust to make it good, did naturally, I hope excusably, (for that is the only ground upon which I stand,) endeavor to support that credit upon which the House acted. I hope I did so; and I hope that the goodness of that intention may excuse me, if I went a little too far on that occasion. I would have endeavored to support that credit, which it was much Mr. Hastings's interest to shake, and which he had before attempted to shake.

Your Lordships will have the goodness to suppose me now making my apology, and by no manner of means intending to persist either in this, or in anything which the House of Commons shall desire me not to declare in their name. But the House of Commons has not denied me the liberty to make you this just apology: God forbid they should! for they would be guilty of great injustice, if they did. The House of Commons, whom I represent, will likewise excuse me, their representative, whilst I have been endeavoring to support their characters in the face of the world, and to make an apology, and only an humble apology, for my conduct, for having considered that act in the light that I represented it,—and which I did merely from my private opinion, without any formal instruction from the House. For there is no doubt that the House is perfectly right, inasmuch as the House did neither formally instruct me nor at all forbid my making use of such an argument; and therefore I have given your Lordships the reason why it was fit to make use of such argument,—if it was right to make use of it. I am in the memory of your Lordships that I did conceive it to be relevant, and it was by the poverty of the language I was led to express my private feelings under the name of a murder. For, if the language had furnished me, under the impression of those feelings, with a word sufficient to convey the complicated atrocity of that act, as I felt it in my mind, I would not have made use of the word murder. It was on account of the language furnishing me with no other I was obliged to use that word. Your Lordships do not imagine, I hope, that I used that word in any other than a moral and popular sense, or that I used it in the legal and technical sense of the word murder. Your Lordships know that I could not bring before this bar any commoner of Great Britain on a charge for murder. I am not so ignorant of the laws and constitution of my country. I expressed an act which I conceived to be of an atrocious and evil nature, and partaking of some of the moral evil consequences of that crime. What led me into that error? Nine years' meditation upon that subject.

My Lords, the prisoner at the bar in the year 1780 sent a petition to the House of Commons complaining of that very chief-justice, Sir Elijah Impey. The House of Commons, who then had some trust in me, as they have some trust still, did order me, along with persons more wise and judicious than myself, several of whom stand near me, to make an inquiry into the state of the justice of that country. The consequence of that inquiry was, that we began to conceive a very bad opinion both of the complainant and defendant in that business,—that we found the English justice to be, as we thought it, and reported it to the House, a grievance, instead of a redress, to the people of India. I could bring before your Lordships, if I did not spare your patience, whole volumes of reports, whole bodies of evidence, which, in the progress we have made in the course of eight or nine years, brought to my mind such a conviction as will never be torn from my heart but with my life; and I should have no heart that was fit to lodge any honest sentiment, if I departed from my opinion upon that occasion. But when I declare my own firm opinion upon it,—when I declare the reasons that led me to it,—when I mention the long meditation that preceded my founding a judgment upon it, the strict inquiry, the many hours and days spent in consideration, collation, and comparison,—I trust that infirmity which could be actuated by no malice to one party or the other may be excused; I trust that I shall meet with this indulgence, when your Lordships consider, that, as far as you know me, as far as my public services for many years account for me, I am a man of a slow, laborious, inquisitive temper, that I do seldom leave a pursuit without leaving marks, perhaps of my weakness, but leaving marks of that labor, and that, in consequence of that labor, I made that affirmation, and thought the nature of the cause obliged me to support and substantiate it. It is true that those who sent me here have sagacity to decide upon the subject in a week; they can in one week discover the errors of my labors for nine years.

Now that I have made this apology to you, I assure you, you shall never hear me, either in my own name here, much less in the name of the Commons, urge one thing to you in support of the credit of Nundcomar grounded upon that judgment, until the House shall instruct and order me otherwise; because I know, that, when I can discover their sentiments, I ought to know nothing here but what is in strict and literal obedience to them.

My Lords, another thing might make me, perhaps, a little willing to be admitted to the proof of what I advanced, and that is, the very answer of Mr. Hastings to this charge, which the House of Commons, however, have adopted, and therefore in some degree purified. "To the malicious part of this charge, which is the condemnation of Nundcomar for a forgery, I do declare, in the most solemn and unreserved manner, that I had no concern, either directly or indirectly, in the apprehending, prosecuting, or executing of Nundcomar. He suffered for a crime of forgery which he had committed in a private trust that was delegated to him, and for which he had been prosecuted in the dewanny courts of the country before the institution of the Supreme Court of Judicature. To adduce this circumstance, therefore, as a confirmation of what was before suspicious from his general depravity of character, is just as reasonable as to assert that the accusations of Empson and Dudley were confirmed because they suffered death for their atrocious acts."

My Lords, this was Mr. Hastings's defence before the House of Commons, and it is now in evidence before your Lordships. In this defence, he supposes the charge which was made originally before the Commons, and which the Commons voted, (though afterwards, for the convenience of shortening it, the affair was brought before your Lordships in the way in which it is,)—he supposes, I say, the whole to proceed from a malicious intention; and I hope your Lordships will not think, and I hope the Commons, reconsidering this matter, will not think, that, when such an imputation of malice was made for the purpose of repelling this corroborating argument which was used in the House of Commons to prove his guilt, I was wrong in attempting to support the House of Commons against his imputation of malice.

I must observe where I am limited and where I am not. I am limited, strictly, fully, (and your Lordships and my country, who hear me, will judge how faithfully I shall adhere to that limitation,) not to support the credit of Nundcomar by any allegation against Mr. Hastings respecting his condemnation or execution; but I am not at all limited from endeavoring to support his credit against Mr. Hastings's charges of other forgeries, and from showing you, what I hope to show you clearly in a few words, that Nundcomar cannot be presumed guilty of forgery with more probability than Mr. Hastings is guilty of bringing forward a light and dangerous (for I use no other words than a light and dangerous) charge of forgery, when it serves his purpose. Mr. Hastings charges Nundcomar with two other forgeries. "These two forgeries," he says, "are facts recorded in the very Proceedings which my accuser partially quotes, proving this man to have been guilty of a most flagrant forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, and of a letter from the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah"; and therefore he infers malice in those who impute anything improper to him, knowing that the proof stood so. Here he asserts that there are records before the House of Commons, and on the Company's Proceedings and Consultations, proving Nundcomar to have been guilty of these two forgeries. Turn over the next page of his printed defence, and you find a very extraordinary thing. You would have imagined that this forgery of a letter from Munny Begum, which, he says, is recognized and proved on the Journals, was a forgery charged by Munny Begum herself, or by somebody on her part, or some person concerned in this business. There is no other charge of it whatever, but the charge of Warren Hastings himself. He wants you to discredit a man for forgery upon no evidence under heaven but that of his own, who thinks proper, without any sort of authority, without any sort of reference, without any sort of collateral evidence, to charge a man with that very direct forgery. "You are," he says, "well informed of the reasons which first induced me to give any share of my confidence to Nundcomar, with whose character I was acquainted by an experience of many years. The means which he himself took to acquire it were peculiar to himself. He sent a messenger to me at Madras, on the first news of my appointment to this Presidency, with pretended letters from Munny Begum and the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah, the brother of the Nabob Jaffier Ali Khan, filled with bitter invectives against Mahomed Reza Khan, and of as warm recommendations, as I recollect, of Nundcomar. I have been since informed by the Begum that the letter which bore her seal was a complete forgery, and that she was totally unacquainted with the use which had been made of her name till I informed her of it. Juggut Chund, Nundcomar's son-in-law, was sent to her expressly to entreat her not to divulge it. Mr. Middleton, whom she consulted on the occasion, can attest the truth of this story."

Mr. Middleton is dead, my Lords. This is not the Mr. Middleton whom your Lordships have heard and know well in this House, but a brother of that Mr. Middleton, who is since dead. Your Lordships find, when we refer to the records of the Company for the proof of this forgery, that there is no other than the unsupported assertion of Mr. Hastings himself that he was guilty of it. Now that was bad enough; but then hear the rest. Mr. Hastings has charged this unhappy man, whom we must not defend, with another forgery; he has charged him with a forgery of a letter from Yeteram ul Dowlah to Mr. Hastings. Now you would imagine that he would have given his own authority at least for that assertion, which he says was proved. He goes on and says, "I have not yet had the curiosity to inquire of the Nabob Yeteram ul Dowlah whether his letter was of the same stamp; but I cannot doubt it."

Now here he begins, in this very defence which is before your Lordships, to charge a forgery upon the credit of Munny Begum, without supporting it even by his own testimony,—and another forgery in the name of Yeteram ul Dowlah, which he said he had not even the curiosity to inquire into, and yet desires you, at the same time, to believe it to be proved. Good God! in what condition do men of the first character and situation in that country stand, when we have here delivered to us, as a record of the Company, Mr. Hastings's own assertions, saying that these forgeries were proved, though you have for the first nothing but his own unsupported assertion, and for the second his declaration only that he had not the curiosity to inquire into it! I am not forbidden by the Commons to state how and on what slight grounds Warren Hastings charges the natives of the country with forgery; neither am I forbidden to bring forward the accusation which Mr. Hastings made against Nundcomar for a conspiracy, nor the event of it, nor any circumstance relative to it. I shall therefore proceed in the best manner I can. There was a period, among the revolutions of philosophy, when there was an opinion, that, if a man lost one limb or organ, the strength of that which was lost retired into what was left. My Lords, if we are straitened in this, then our vigor will be redoubled in the rest, and we shall use it with double force. If the top and point of the sword is broken off, we shall take the hilt in our hand, and fight with whatever remains of the weapon against bribery, corruption, and peculation; and we shall use double diligence under any restraint which the wisdom of the Commons may lay upon us, or your Lordships' wisdom may oblige us to submit to.

Having gone through this business, and shown in what manner I am restrained, where I am not to repel Mr. Hastings's defence, and where I am left at large to do it, I shall submit to the strict injunction with the utmost possible humility, and enjoy the liberty which is left to me with vigor, with propriety, and with discretion, I trust.

* * * * *

My Lords, when the circumstance happened which has given occasion to the long parenthesis by which my discourse has been interrupted, I remember I was beginning to open to your Lordships the second period of Mr. Hastings's scheme and system of bribery. My Lords, his bribery is so extensive, and has had such a variety in it, that it must be distinguished not only with regard to its kind, but must be likewise distinguished according to the periods of bribery and the epochas of peculation committed by him. In the first of those periods we shall prove to your Lordships, I believe, without the aids that we hoped for, (your Lordships allowing, as I trust you will do, a good deal for our situation,)—we shall be able, I say, to prove that Mr. Hastings took, as a bribe for appointing Munny Begum, three lac and an half of rupees; we shall prove the taking at the same time the Rajeshaye bribes. Mr. Hastings at that time followed bribery in a natural manner: he took a bribe; he took it as large as he could; he concealed it as well as he could; and he got out of it by artifice or boldness, by use of trick or use of power, just as he was enabled: he acted like a wild, natural man, void of instruction, discipline, and art.

The second period opened another system of bribery. About this time he began to think (from what communication your Lordships may guess) of other means by which, when he could no longer conceal any bribe that he had received, he not only might exempt himself from the charge and the punishment of guilt, but might convert it into a kind of merit, and, instead of a breaker of laws, a violator of his trust, a receiver of scandalous bribes, a peculator of the first magnitude, might make himself to be considered as a great, distinguishing, eminent financier, a collector of revenue in new and extraordinary ways, and that we should thus at once praise his diligence, industry, and ingenuity. The scheme he set on foot was this: he pretended that the Company could not exist upon principles of strict justice, (for so he expresses it,) and that their affairs, in many cases, could not be so well accommodated by a regular revenue as by privately taking money, which was to be applied to their service by the person who took it, at his discretion. This was the principle he laid down. It would hardly be believed, I imagine, unless strong proof appeared, that any man could be so daring as to hold up such a resource to a regular government, which had three million of known, avowed, a great part of it territorial, revenue. But it is necessary, it seems, to piece out the lion's skin with a fox's tail,—to tack on a little piece of bribery and a little piece of peculation, in order to help out the resources of a great and flourishing state; that they should have in the knavery of their servants, in the breach of their laws, and in the entire defiance of their covenants, a real resource applicable to their necessities, of which they were not to judge, but the persons who were to take the bribes; and that the bribes thus taken were, by a mental reservation, a private intention in the mind of the taker, unknown to the giver, to be some time or other, in some way or other, applied to the public service. The taking such bribes was to become a justifiable act, in consequence of that reservation in the mind of the person who took them; and he was not to be called to account for them in any other way than as he thought fit.

My Lords, an act of Parliament passed in the year 1773, the whole drift of which, I may say, was to prevent bribery, peculation, and extortion in the Company's servants; and the act was penned, I think, with as much strictness and rigor as ever act was penned. The 24th clause of Chap. 63, 13 Geo. III., has the following enactment: "And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that, from and after the first day of August, 1774, no person holding or exercising any civil or military office under the crown, or the said United Company, in the East Indies, shall accept, receive, or take, directly or indirectly, by himself, or any other person or persons on his behalf, or for his use or benefit, of and from any of the Indian princes or powers, or their ministers or agents, or any of the natives of Asia, any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward, pecuniary or otherwise, upon any account, or on any pretence whatsoever, or any promise or engagement for any present, gift, donation, gratuity, or reward: and if any person, holding or exercising any such civil or military office, shall be guilty of any such offence, and shall be thereof legally convicted," &c., &c. It then imposes the penalties: and your Lordships see that human wisdom cannot pen an act more strongly directed against taking bribes upon any pretence whatever.

This act of Parliament was in affirmance of the covenant entered into by the servants of the Company, and of the explicit orders of the Company, which forbid any person whatever in trust, "directly or indirectly, to accept, take, or receive, or agree to accept, take, or receive, any gift, reward, gratuity, allowance, donation, or compensation, in money, effects, jewels, or otherwise howsoever, from any of the Indian princes, sovereigns, subahs, or nabobs, or any of their ministers, servants, or agents, exceeding the value of four thousand rupees, &c., &c. And that he, the said Warren Hastings, shall and will convey, assign, and make over to the said United Company, for their sole and proper use and benefit, all and every such gifts, rewards, gratuities, allowances, donations, or compensations whatsoever, which, contrary to the true intent and meaning of these presents, shall come into the hands, possession, or power of the said Warren Hastings, or any other person or persons in trust for him or for his use."

The nature of the covenant, the act of Parliament, and the Company's orders are clear. First, they have not forbidden their Governor-General, nor any of their Governors, to take and accept from the princes of the country, openly and publicly, for their use, any territories, lands, sums of money, or other donations, which may be offered in consequence of treaty or otherwise. It was necessary to distinguish this from every other species of acceptance, because many occasions occurred in which fines were paid to the Company in consequence of treaties; and it was necessary to authorize the receipt of the same in the Company's treasury, as an open and known proceeding. It was never dreamed that this should justify the taking of bribes, privately and clandestinely, by the Governor, or any other servant of the Company, for the purpose of its future application to the Company's use. It is declared that all such bribes and money received should be the property of the Company. And why? As a means of recovering them out of the corrupt hands that had taken them. And therefore this was not a license for bribery, but a prohibitory and penal clause, providing the means of coercion, and making the prohibition stronger. Now Mr. Hastings has found out that this very coercive clause, which was made in order to enable his superiors to get at him and punish him for bribery, is a license for him to receive bribes. He is not only a practitioner of bribery, but a professor, a doctor upon the subject. His opinion is, that he might take presents or bribes to himself; he considers the penal clause which the Company attached to their prohibition, and by which all such bribes are constructively declared to be theirs, in order to recover them out of his hands, as a license to receive bribes, to extort money; and he goes with the very prohibition in his hand, the very means by which he was to be restrained, to exercise an unlimited bribery, peculation, and extortion over the unhappy natives of the country.

The moment he finds that the Company has got a scent of any one of his bribes, he comes forward and says, "To be sure, I took it as a bribe; I admit the party gave me it as a bribe: I concealed it for a time, because I thought it was for the interest of the Company to conceal it; but I had a secret intention, in my own mind, of applying it to their service: you shall have it; but you shall have it as I please, and when I please; and this bribe becomes sanctified the moment I think fit to apply it to your service." Now can it be supposed that the India Company, or that the act of Parliament, meant, by declaring that the property taken by a corrupt servant, contrary to the true intent of his covenant, was theirs, to give a license to take such property,—and that one mode of obtaining a revenue was by the breach of the very covenants which were meant to prevent extortion, peculation, and corruption? What sort of body is the India Company, which, coming to the verge of bankruptcy by the robbery of half the world, is afterwards to subsist upon the alms of peculation and bribery, to have its strength recruited by the violation of the covenants imposed upon its own servants? It is an odd sort of body to be so fed and so supported. This new constitution of revenue that he has made is indeed a very singular contrivance. It is a revenue to be collected by any officer of the Company, (for they are all alike forbidden, and all alike permitted,)—to be collected by any person, from any person, at any time, in any proportion, by any means, and in any way he pleases; and to be accounted for, or not to be accounted for, at the pleasure of the collector, and, if applied to their use, to be applied at his discretion, and not at the discretion of his employers. I will venture to say that such a system of revenue never was before thought of. The next part is an exchequer, which he has formed, corresponding with it. You will find the board of exchequer made up of officers ostensibly in the Company's service, of their public accountant and public treasurer, whom Mr. Hastings uses as an accountant and treasurer of bribes, accountable, not to the Company, but to himself, acting in no public manner, and never acting but upon his requisition, concealing all his frauds and artifices to prevent detection and discovery. In short, it is an exchequer in which, if I may be permitted to repeat the words I made use of on a former occasion, extortion is the assessor, in which fraud is the treasurer, confusion the accountant, oblivion the remembrancer. That these are not mere words, I will exemplify as I go through the detail: I will show you that every one of the things I have stated are truths, in fact, and that these men are bound by the condition of their recognized fidelity to Mr. Hastings to keep back his secrets, to change the accounts, to alter the items, to make him debtor or creditor at pleasure, and by that means to throw the whole system of the Company's accounts into confusion.