verted, and that the country experienced the last and most dreadful effects of anarchy. We have shown you that no other security was left to any human being, but to intrench themselves in such forts as they could make, and that these forts, in one district only of the country, had increased in number to the amount of seven hundred. Your Lordships also know, that, when the prisons and mud forts in which Colonel Hannay kept his hostages confined were full, he kept them in uncovered cages in the open air. You know that all these farmers of revenue were either English and military men, or natives under an abject submission to them; you know that they had the whole country in assignments, that the jaghires were all confiscated for their benefits; and you find that the whole system had its origin at the time when Mr. Hastings alone formed in effect the authority of the Supreme Council. The weakness of the Nabob, as Sir Eyre Coote tells you, could not have been alone the cause of these evils, and that our influence over him, if not actually the cause of the utter ruin, desolation, and anarchy of that country, might have been successfully exerted in preventing.

When your Lordships shall proceed to judgment upon these accumulated wrongs, arising out of the usurped power of the prisoner at your bar, and redressed by him in no one instance whatever, let not the usurpation itself of the Nabob's power be considered as a trivial matter. When any prince at the head of a great country is entirely stripped of everything in his government, civil or military, by which his rank may be distinguished or his virtues exercised, he is in danger of becoming a mere animal, and of abandoning himself wholly to sensual grati

fications. Feeling no personal interest in the institutions or in the general welfare of the country, he suffers the former (and many wise and laudable institutions existed in the provinces of the Nabob, for their good order and government) to fall into disuse, and he leaves the country itself to persons in inferior situations, to be wasted and destroyed by them. You find that in Oude, the very appearance of justice had been banished out of it, and that every aumil exercised an arbitrary power over the lives and fortunes. of the people. My Lords, we have the proofs of all these facts in our hands; they are in your Lordships' minutes; and though we can state nothing stronger than is stated in the papers themselves, yet we do not so far forget our duty as not to point out to your Lordships such observations as arise out of them.

To close the whole, your Lordships shall now hear read an extract from a most curious and extraordinary letter, sent by him to the Court of Directors, preparatory to his return to England.

"My only remaining fear is, that the members of the Council, seeing affairs through a different medium from that through which I view them, may be disposed, if not to counteract the system which I have formed, to withhold from it their countenance and active support. While I myself remain, it will be sufficient if they permit it to operate without interruption; and I almost hope, in the event of a new administration of your affairs which shall confine itself to the same forbearance, and manifest no symptoms of intended interference, the objects of my arrangements will be effectually attained; for I leave them in the charge of agents whose interests, ambi

tion, and every prospect of life are interwoven with their success, and the hand of Heaven has visibly blest the soil with every elementary source of progressive vegetation: but if a different policy shall be adopted, if new agents are sent into the country and armed with authority for the purpose of vengeance. or corruption, to no other will they be applied. If new demands are raised on the Nabob Vizier, and accounts overcharged on one side with a wide latitude taken on the other to swell his debt beyond the means of payment, if political dangers are portended, to ground on them the pleas of burdening his country with unnecessary defences and enormous subsidies, or if, even abstaining from direct encroachment on the Nabob's rights, your government shall show but a degree of personal kindness to the partisans of the late usurpation, or by any constructive indication of partiality and disaffection furnish ground for the expectation of an approaching change of system, I am sorry to say that all my labors will prove abortive; for the slightest causes will be sufficient to deject minds sore with the remembrance of past conflicts, and to elevate those whose only dependence is placed in the renewal of the confusion which I have labored with such zeal to eradicate, and will of course. debilitate the authority which can alone insure future success. I almost fear that this denunciation of effects from causes so incompetent, as they will appear to those who have not had the experience which I have had of the quick sensibility which influences the habits of men placed in a state of polity so loose, and subject to the continual variations of capricious and despotic authority, will be deemed overcharged, or perhaps void of foundation; nor, if they

should come to pass, will it be easy to trace them with any positive evidence to their connection: yet it is my duty to apprise you of what I apprehend, on grounds which I deem of absolute certainty, may come to pass; and I rely on your candor for a fair interpretation of my intention."

Here, my Lords, the prisoner at your bar has done exactly what his bitterest accuser would do: he goes through, head by head, every one of the measures which he had himself pursued in the destruction of the country; and he foretells, that, if any one of those measures should again be pursued, or even if good cause should be given to suspect they would be renewed, the country must fall into a state of inevitable destruction. This supersedes all observation. This paper is a recapitulated, minute condemnation of every step which he took in that country, and which steps are every one of them upon your Lordships' minutes.

But, my Lords, we know very well the design of these pretended apprehensions, and why he wished to have that country left in the state he speaks of. He had left a secret agent of his own to control that ostensible government, and to enable him, sitting in the place where he now sits, to continue to govern those provinces in the way in which he now governs them.

[A murmur having arisen here, Mr. Burke proceeded.]

If I am called upon to reword what I have just said, I shall repeat my words, and show strong grounds and reasons to indicate that he governs Oude now as much as he ever did.

You see, my Lords, that the reform which he pretended to make in 1781 produced the calamities.

which he states to have existed in 1784. We shall now show that the reform which he pretended to make in 1784 brought on the calamities which Lord Cornwallis states in his evidence to have existed in 1787.

We will now read two letters from Lord Cornwallis: the first is dated the 16th November, 1787.

"I was received at Allahabad and attended to Lucknow by the Nabob and his ministers with every mark of friendship and respect. I cannot, however, express how much I was concerned, during my short residence at his capital, and my progress through hist dominions, to be witness of the disordered state of his finances and government, and of the desolate appearances of his country. The evils were too alarming to admit of palliation, and I thought it my duty to exhort him, in the most friendly manner, to endeavor to apply effectual remedies to them. He began with urging as apology, that, whilst he was not certain of the expense [extent?] of our demands upon him, he had no real interest in being economical in his expenses, and that, while we interfered in the internal management of his affairs, his own authority and that of his ministers were despised by his own. subjects. It would have been useless to discuss these topics with him; but while I repeated my former declarations of our being determined to give no ground in future for similar complaints, he gave me the strongest assurances of his being resolved to apply himself earnestly to the encouragement of agriculture, and to endeavor to revive the commerce of his country."

The second is dated the 25th April, 1788.