heap of violence and absurdity to some degree of principle. Mr. Hastings having completely acquitted the Rajah of any other fault than contumacy, and having supposed even that to be only personal to himself, he thought a fine of 500,000% would be a proper punishment. Now, when any man goes to exact a fine, it presupposes inquiry, charge, defence, and judg ment. It does so in the Mahometan law; it does so in the Gentoo law; it does so in the law of England, in the Roman law, and in the law, I believe, of every nation under heaven, except in that law which resides in the arbitrary breast of Mr. Hastings, poisoned by the prin ciples and stimulated by the examples of those wicked traitors and rebels whom I have before described. He mentions his intention of levying a fine, but does he make any mention of having charged the Rajah with his offences? It appears that he held an incredible quantity of private correspondence through the various Residents, through Mr. Graham, Mr. Fowke, Mr. Markham, Mr. Benn, concerning the affairs of that country. Did he ever, upon this alleged contumacy (for at present I put the rebellion out of the question), inquire the progress of this personal affront offered to the Governour General of Bengal? Did he ever state it to the Rajah, or did he call his vakeel before the Council to answer answer the charge? Did he examine any one per son or particularize a single fact in any manner whatever? No. What then did he do? Why, my Lords, he declared himself the person injured, stood forward as the accuser, assumed the office of judge, and proceeded to judgment without a party before him, without trial, without examination, without proof. He thus directly reversed the order of justice. He determined to fine the Rajah when his own patience, as he says, was exhausted, not when justice demanded the punishment. He resolved to fine him in the enormous sum of 500,000 l. Does he inform the Council of this determination? No. The Court of Directors? No. Any one of his confidants? No, not one of them; not Mr. Palmer, not Mr. Middleton, nor any of that legion of secretaries that he had; nor did he even inform Mr. Malcolm of his intentions until he met him at Bauglepore. In regard to the object of his malice, we only know that many letters came from Cheit Sing to Mr. Hastings, in which the unfortunate man endeavoured to appease his wrath, and to none of which he ever gave an answer. He is an accuser preferring a charge and receiving apologies, without giving the party an answer; although he had a crowd of secretaries about him, maintained at the expense of the miserable people of Benares, Benares, and paid by sums of money drawn fraudulently from their pockets. Still not one word of answer was given, till he had formed the resolution of exacting a fine, and had actually by torture made his victim's servant discover where his master's treasures lay, in order that he might rob him of all his family possessed. Are these the proceedings of a British judge; or are they not rather such as are described by Lord Coke (and these learned gentlemen, I dare say, will remember the passage; it is too striking not to be remembered) as " the damned and "damnable proceedings of a judge in hell." Such a judge has the Prisoner at your bar proved himself to be. First, he determines upon the punishment, then he prepares the accusation, and then by torture and violence endeavours to extort the fine. - My Lords, I must again beg leave to call your attention to his mode of proceeding in this business. He never entered any charge. He never answered any letter. Not that he was idle. He was carrying on a wicked and clandestine plot for the destruction of the Rajah, under the pretence of this fine; although the plot was not known, I verily believe, to any European at the time. He does not pretend that he told any one of the company's servants of his intentions of fining the Rajah; but that some hostile project against against him had been formed by Mr. Hastings, was perfectly well known to the natives. Mr. Hastings tells you, that Cheit Sing had a vakeel at Calcutta, whose business it was to learn the general transactions of our government, and the most minute particulars which could, in any manner, affect the interest of his employer. I must here tell your Lordships, that there is no court in Asia, from the highest to the lowest, no petty sovereign that does not both employ and receive what they call Hircarrahs, or in other words, persons to collect and to communicate political intelligence. These men are received with the state and in the rank of ambassadors; they have their place in the Durbar, and their business, as authorized spies, is as well known there as that of ambassadors extraordinary and ordinary in the courts of Europe. Mr. Hastings had a publick spy in the person of the Resident, at Benares, and he had a private spy there in another person. The spies employed by the native powers had, by some means, come to the knowledge of Mr. Hastings's clandestine and wicked intentions towards this unhappy man, Cheit Sing, and his unhappy country, and of his designs for the destruction and the utter ruin of both. He has himself told you, and he has got Mr. Anderson to vouch it, that he had received proposals for the sale of this miserable man and his country. And from whom did he receive these proposals, my Lords? Why, from the Nabob Azoph ul Dowlah, to whom he threatened to transfer both the person of the Rajah and his zemindary if he did not redeem himself by some pecuniary sacrifice. Now Azoph ul Dowlah, as appears by the Minutes on your Lordships' table, was at that time a bankrupt. He was in debt to the Company tenfold more than he could pay, and all his revenues were sequestered for that debt. He was a person of the last degree of indolence, with the last degree of rapacity. A man, of whom Mr. Hastings declared, that he had wasted and destroyed by his misgovernment the fairest provinces upon earth; that not a person in his dominions was secure from his violence, and that even his own father could not enjoy his life and honour in safety under him. This avaricious bankrupt tyrant, who had beggared and destroyed his own subjects, and could not pay his debts to the English government, was the man with whom Mr. Hastings was in treaty to deliver up Cheit Sing and his country, under pretence of his not having paid regularly to the Company those customary payments which the tyrant would probably have never paid at all, if he had been put in possession of the country. This I mention to illustrate Mr. Hastings's plans of economy and VOL. XV. finance, K |