could not be for any other purpose: and I defy the wit of man to find out any other.

He says, my Lords, that Cheit Sing might have resisted, and that if he had not been there, the Rajah might have fled with his money; or raised a rebellion for the purpose of avoiding payment. Why then, we ask, did he not send an army? We ask, whether Mr. Markham, with an army under the command of Colonel Popham, or Mr. Fowke, or any other Resident, was not much more likely to exact a great sum of money than Mr. Hastings without an army? My Lords, the answer must be in the affirmative; it is therefore evident, that no necessity could exist for his presence, and that his presence and conduct occasioned his being defeated in this matter.

We find this man armed with an illegal commission, undertaking an enterprise which he has since said was perilous; which proved to be perilous, and in which, as he has told us himself, the existence of the British empire in India was involved. The talisman (your Lordships will remember his use of the word) that charm which kept all India in order; which kept mighty and warlike nations under the government of a few Englishmen, would, I verily believe have been broken for ever, if he, or any other governour general, good or bad, had been killed. Infinite mischiefs would have followed such an event.

The

The situation in which he placed himself, by his own misconduct, was pregnant with danger; and he put himself in the way of that danger, without having any armed force worth men. tioning; although he has acknowledged that Cheit Sing had then an immense force. In fact the demand of two thousand cavalry proves that he considered the Rajah's army to be formidable; yet notwithstanding this, with four companies. of Seapoys, poorly armed and ill provisioned, he went to invade that fine country, and to force from its sovereign a sum of money, the payment of which he had reason to think would be resisted. He thus rashly hazarded his own being, and the being of all his people.

But, says he, "I did not imagine the Rajah "intended to go into rebellion, and therefore "went unarmed." Why then was his presence necessary? why did he not send an order from Calcutta for the payment of the money? But what did he do when he got there? "I was "alarmed," says he, "for the Rajah surrounded "my budgerow with two thousand men that "indicated a hostile disposition." Well, if he did so, what precaution did Mr. Hastings take for his own safety? Why none, my Lords, none, he must therefore have been either a madman, a fool, or a determined declarer of falsehood. Either he thought there was no danger, and therefore

therefore no occasion for providing against it, or he was the worst of governours; the most culpably improvident of his personal safety, of the lives of his officers and men, and of his country's honour.

The demand of 500,000l. was a thing likely to irritate the Rajah and to create resistance. In fact he confesses this. Mr. Markham and he had a discourse upon that subject; and agreed to arrest the Rajah, because they thought the enforcing this demand might drive him to his forts, and excite a rebellion in the country, He therefore knew there was danger to be appre hended from this act of violence; and yet knowing this, he sent one unarmed Resident to give the orders, and four unarmed companies of Sepoys to support him. He provokes the people; he goads them with every kind of insult, added to every kind of injury, and then rushes into the very jaws of danger, provoking a formidable foe by the display of a puny, insignificant force.

In expectation of danger, he seized the person of the Rajah, and he pretends that the Rajah suffered no disgrace from his arrest. But, my Lords, we have proved, what was stated by the Rajah, and was well known to Mr. Hastings; that to imprison a person of elevated station, in that country, is to subject him to the highest dishonour and disgrace; and would make the

person

person so imprisoned, utterly unfit to execute the functions of government ever after.

I have now to state to your Lordships a transaction, which is worse than his wantonly playing with the safety of the Company, worse than his exacting sums of money by fraud and violence. My Lords, the history of this transaction must be prefaced, by describing to your Lordships the duty and privileges attached to the office of Naib. A naib is an officer well known in India, as the administrator of the affairs of any government, whenever the authority of the regular holder is suspended. But although the naib acts only as a deputy; yet when the power of the principal is totally super seded, as by imprisonment or otherwise, and that of the naib is substituted, he becomes the actual sovereign, and the principal is reduced to a mere pensioner. I am now to show your Lordships whom Mr. Hastings appointed as haib to the government of the country, after he had imprisoned the Rajah.

Cheit Sing had given him to understand through Mr. Markham, that he was aware of the design of suspending him, and of placing his government in the hands of a naib whom he greatly dreaded. This person was called Oossaur Sing; he was a remote relation of the family, and an object of their peculiar suspicion and

terrour.

terrour. The moment Cheit Sing was arrested,. he found that his prophetick soul spoke truly, for Mr. Hastings actually appointed this very man to be his master. And who was this man? We are told by Mr. Markham, in his evidence here, that he was a man who had dishonoured his family; he was the disgrace of his house; that he was a person who could not be trusted; and Mr. Hastings, in giving Mr. Markham full power afterwards to appoint naibs, expressly excepted this Oossaun Sing from all trust what→ ever, as a person totally unworthy of it. Yet this Oossaun Sing, the disgrace and calamity. of his family, an incestuous adulturer, and a supposed issue of a guilty connexion, was declared naib. Yes, my Lords, this degraded, this wicked and flagitious character, the Rajah's avowed enemy, was, in order to heighten the Rajah's disgrace, to embitter his ruin, to make destruction itself dishonourable as well as destructive, appointed this naib. Thus, when Mr. Hastings had imprisoned the Rajah in the face of his subjects, and in the face of all India, without fixing any term for the duration of his imprisonment, he delivered up the country to a man whom he knew to be utterly undeserving. A man whom he kept in view for the purpose of frightening the Rajah, and whom he was abliged to depose on account of his misconduct,

almost