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ments! They were, you have heard, an intolerable burthen on the revenues and authority of the Vizier; and they exposed us to the envy and resentment of the whole country, by excluding the native servants and adherents of the prince from the just reward of their services and attachments. Here, my lords, is the whole civil service brought before you. They usurp the country, they destroy the revenues, they overload the prince, and they exclude all the nobility and eminent persons of the country from the just reward of their service.

Did Mr. Francis, whom I saw here a little while ago, send these people into that country? Did General Clavering, or Colonel Monson, whom he charges with this system, send them there? No; they were sent by himself; and if one was sent by anybody else for a time, he was soon recalled; so that he is himself answerable for all the peculation which he attributes to the civil service. You see the character given of that service; you there see their accuser; you there see their defender, who, after having defamed both services, military and civil, never punished the guilty in either; and now receives the prodigal praises of both.

I defy the ingenuity of man to show that Mr. Hastings is not the defamer of the service. I defy the ingenuity of man to show that the honour of Great Britain has not been tarnished under his patronage. He engaged to remove all these blood-suckers by the treaty of Chunar; but he never executed that treaty. He proposed to take away the temporary brigade; but he again established it. He redressed no grievance; he formed no improvements in the government; he never attempted to provide a remedy without increasing the evil tenfold. He was the primary and sole cause of all the grievances, civil and military, to which the unhappy natives of that country were exposed; and he was the accuser of all the immediate authors of those grievances, without having punished any one of them. He is the accuser of them all. But the only person whom he attempted to punish was that man who dared to assert the authority of the court of directors, and to claim an office assigned to him by them.

I will now read to your lordships the protest of General Clavering against the military brigade: "Taking the army from the Nabob is an infringement of the rights of an inde

pendent prince, leaving only the name and title of it without the power. It is taking his subjects from him, against every law of nature and of nations."

I will next read to your lordships a minute of Mr. Francis's: "By the foregoing letter from Mr. Middleton, it appears that he has taken the government of the Nabob's dominions directly upon himself. I was not a party to the resolutions which preceded that measure, and will not be answerable for the consequences of it."

The next paper I will read is one introduced by the managers, to prove that a representation was made by the Nabob, respecting the expenses of the gentlemen resident at his court, and written after the removal before-mentioned..

Extract of a Letter from the Vizier to Mr. Macpherson; received the 21st of April, 1785.

"With respect to the expenses of the gentlemen who are here, I have before written in a covered manner; I now write plainly, that I have no ability to give money to the gentlemen, because I am indebted many lacks of rupees to the bankers, for the payment of the Company's debt. At the time of Mr. Hastings's departure I represented to him that I had no resources for the expenses of the gentlemen. Mr. Hastings, having ascertained my distressed situation, told me that after his arrival in Calcutta he would consult with the council, and remove from hence the expenses of the gentlemen, and recall every person, except the gentlemen in office here. At this time, that all the concerns are dependent upon you, and you have in every point given ease to my mind, according to Mr. Hastings's agreement, I hope that the expenses of the gentlemen may be removed from me, and that you may recall every person residing here beyond the gentlemen in office. Although Major Palmer does not at this time demand anything for the gentlemen, and I have no ability to give them anything, yet the custom of the English gentlemen is, when they remain here, they will in the end ask for something; this is best, that they should be recalled."

I think so too, and your lordships will think so with me; but Mr. Hastings, who says that he himself thought thus in September, 1781, and engaged to recall these gentlemen, was so afraid of their powerful friends and patrons here, that he

left India, and left all that load of obloquy upon his successors. He left a Major Palmer there, in the place of a resident; a resident of his own, as your lordships must see; for Major Palmer was no resident of the Company's. This man received a salary of about £23,000 a year, which he declared to be less than his expenses; by which we may easily judge of the enormous salaries of those who make their fortunes there. He was left by Mr. Hastings as his representative of peculation, his representative of tyranny. He was the second agent appointed to control all power ostensible and unostensible, and to head these gentlemen whose "custom," the Nabob says, "was in the end to ask for money." Money they must have; and there, my lords, is the whole secret.

I have this day shown your lordships the entire dependence of Oude on the British empire. I have shown you how Mr. Hastings usurped all power, reduced the prince to a cypher, and made of his minister a mere creature of his own; how he made the servants of the Company dependent on his own arbitrary will, and considered independence a proof of corruption. It has been likewise proved to your lordships, that he suffered the army to become an instrument of robbery and oppression; and one of its officers to be metamorphosed into a farmer-general; to waste the country and embezzle its revenues. You have seen a clandestine and fraudulent system, occasioning violence and rapine; and you have seen the prisoner at the bar acknowledging and denouncing an abandoned spirit of rapacity, without bringing its ministers to justice; and pleading, as his excuse, the fear of offending your lordships and the House of Commons. We have shown you the government, revenue, commerce, and agriculture of Oude ruined and destroyed by Mr. Hastings and his creatures. And to wind up all, we have shown you an army so corrupted as to pervert the fundamental principles of justice, which are the elements and basis of military discipline. All this, I say, we have shown you; and I cannot believe that your lordships will consider that we have trifled with your time, or strained our comments one jot beyond the strict measure of the text.

We have shown you a horrible scene, arising from an astonishing combination of horrible circumstances. The order in which you will consider these circumstances must be left

to your lordships. At present I am not able to proceed further. My next attempt will be to bring before you the manner in which Mr. Hastings treated moveable and immoveable property in Oude, and by which he has left nothing undestroyed in that devoted country.

[Adjourned.

TRIAL.

SATURDAY, 7TH JUNE, 1794.

FIFTH DAY OF REPLY.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS,-We will now resume the consideration of the remaining part of our charge, and of the prisoner's attempts to defend himself against it.

Mr. Hastings, well knowing (what your lordships must also by this time be perfectly satisfied was the case) that this unfortunate Nabob had no will of his own, draws down his poor victim to Chunar, by an order to attend the GovernorGeneral. If the Nabob ever wrote to Mr. Hastings, expressing a request or desire for this meeting, his letter was unquestionably dictated to him by the prisoner. We have laid a ground of direct proof before you that the Nabob's being at Chunar, that his proceedings there, and that all his acts, were so dictated, and consequently must be so construed.

I shall now proceed to lay before your lordships the acts of oppression committed by Mr. Hastings through his two miserable instruments; the one, his passive instrument, the Nabob; the other, Mr. Middleton, his active instrument in his subsequent plans for the entire destruction of that country. In page 513 of the printed minutes, you have Mr. Middleton's declaration of his promptitude to represent everything agreeably to Mr. Hastings's wishes.

My dear Sir,-I have this day answered your public letter in the form you seemed to expect. I hope there is no

thing in it that may to you appear too pointed. If you wish the matter to be otherwise understood than I have taken up and stated it, I need not say I shall be ready to conform to whatever you may prescribe, and to take upon myself any share of the blame of the hitherto non-performance of the stipulations made on behalf of the Nabob; though I do assure you, I myself represented to his Excellency and the ministers, conceiving it to be your desire, that the apparent assumption of the reins of his government (for in that light he undoubtedly considered it at the first view), as specified in the agreement executed by him, was not meant to be fully and literally enforced, but that it was necessary you should have something to show on your side, as the Company were deprived of a benefit, without a requital; and upon the faith of this assurance alone, I believe I may safely affirm, his Excellency's objections to signing the treaty were given up. If I have understood the matter wrong, or misconceived your design, I am truly sorry for it. However, it is not too late. to correct the error: and I am ready to undertake and, God willing, to carry through whatever you may, on the receipt of my public letter, tell me is your final resolve.

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If you determine, at all events, that the measures of reducing the Nabob's army, &c., shall be immediately undertaken, I shall take it as a particular favour if you will indulge me with a line at Fyzabad, that I may make the necessary previous arrangements with respect to the disposal of my family, which I would not wish to retain here in the event either of a rupture with the Nabob, or the necessity of employing our forces on the reduction of his aumils and troops. This done, I can begin the work in three days after my return from Fyzabad."

Besides this letter, which I think is sufficiently clear upon the subject, there is also another, much more clear, upon your lordships' minutes, much more distinct and much more pointed, expressive of his being resolved to make such representations of every matter as the Governor-General may wish. Now, a man who is master of the manner in which facts are represented, and whose subsequent conduct is to be justified by such representations, is not simply accountable for his conduct; he is accountable for culpably attempting to

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