prosecutor, and without evidence. The next ships will bring you an account of his honourable acquittal.

I have stated before, that I considered Mr. Hastings as responsible for the characters of the people he employed; doubly responsible, if he knew them to be bad. I, therefore, charge him with putting in situations, in which any evil may be committed, persons of known evil characters.

My lords, I charge him, as chief governour, with destroying the institutions of the country, which were designed to be, and ought to have been, controuls upon such a person as Debi Sing.

An officer, called dewan or steward of the country, had always been placed as a controul on the farmer ;—but that no such controul should in fact exist,-that he, Debi Sing, should be let loose to rapine, slaughter and plunder in the country, both offices were conferred on him. Did Mr. Hastings vest these offices in him? No; but, if Mr. Hastings had kept firm to the duties, which the act of parliament appointed him to execute, all the revenue appointments must have been made by him: but, instead of making them himself, he appointed Gunga Govin Sing to make them; and for that appointment, and for the whole train of subordinate villany, which followed the placing iniquity in the chief seat of government, Mr. Hastings is answerable.He is answerable, I say, first, for destroying his own legal capacity; and next, for destroying the legal capacity of the council, not one of whom ever had, or could have, any true knowledge of the state of the country from the moment he buried it in the gulf of mystery, and of darkness, under that collected heap of villany, Gunga Govin Sing. From that moment he destroyed the power of government, and put every thing into his hands; for this he is answerable.

The provincial councils consisted of many members, who, though they might unite in some small iniquities perhaps, could not possibly have concealed from the publick eye the commission of such acts as these. Their very numbers, their natural competitions, the contentions, that must have arisen among them, must have put a check, at least, to such a business.

And, therefore, Mr. Hastings having destroyed every check and controul above and below, having delivered the whole into the hands of Gunga Govin Sing, for all the iniquities of Gunga Govin Sing he is responsible.

But he did not know Debi Sing, whom he employed. I read yesterday, and trust it is fresh in your lordships' remembrance, that Debi Sing was presented to him by that set of tools, as they call themselves, who acted, as they themselves tell us they must act, entirely and implicitly under Gunga Govin Sing;—that is to say, by Gunga Govin Sing himself, the confidential agent of Mr. Hastings.

Mr. Hastings is further responsible, because he took a bribe of 40,000l. from some person in power in Dinagepore and Rungpore, the countries, which were ravaged in this manner, through the hands of Gunga Govin Sing,-through the medium of that very person, whom he had appointed to exercise all the authorities of the supreme council above, and of all subordinate councils below. Having, therefore, thus appointed a council of tools in the hands of Gunga Govin Sing, at the expense of 62,000l. a year, to supersede all the English provincial authorities; having appointed them for the purpose of establishing a bribe factor-general, a general receiver and agent of bribes, through all that country; Mr. Hastings is responsible for all the consequences of it.

I have thought it necessary, and absolutely necessary it is, to state what the consequence of this clandestine mode of supplying the company's exigencies was. Your lordships will see, that their exigencies are to be supplied by the ruin of the landed interest of a province, the destruction of the husbandmen, and the ruin of all the people in it. This is the consequence of a general bribe broker, an agent like Gunga Govin Sing, superseding all the powers and controuls of government.

But Mr. Hastings has not only reduced bribery to a system of government practically, but theoretically. For when he despaired any longer of concealing his bribes from the penetrating eye of parliament, then he took another mode, and declared, as your lordships will see, that it was the best way of supplying the necessities of the East-India Company

in the pressing exigencies of their affairs; that thus a relief to the company's affairs might be yielded, which in the common ostensible mode, and under the ordinary forms of government, and publicly, never would be yielded to them. So that bribery with him became a supplement to exaction.

The best way of showing, that a theoretical system is bad, is to show the practical mischiefs, that it produces; because a thing may look specious in theory, and yet be ruinous in practice; a thing may look evil in theory, and yet be in its practice excellent. Here a thing in theory, stated by Mr. Hastings to be productive of much good, is in reality productive of all those horrible mischiefs I have stated. That Mr. Hastings well knew this, appears from an extract of the Bengal Revenue Consultations, 21st January 1785, a little before he came away.

Mr. Hastings says, "I entirely acquit Mr. Goodlad of all the charges: he has disproved them. It was the duty of the accuser to prove them. Whatever crimes may be established against rajah Debi Sing, it does not follow, that Mr. Goodlad was responsible for them and I so well know the character and abilities of rajah Debi Sing, that I can easily conceive, that it was in his power both to commit the enormities, which are laid to his charge, and to conceal the grounds of them from Mr. Goodlad, who had no authority but that of receiving the accounts and rents of the district from rajah Debi Sing, and occasionally to be the channel of communication between him and the committee."

We shall now see what things Mr. Hastings did, what course he was in, a little before his departure; with what propriety and consistency of character he has behaved from the year of the commencement of his corrupt system in 1773 to the end of it, when he closed it in 1785; when the bribes not only mounted the chariot, but boarded the barge, and, as I shall show, followed him down to the Ganges, and even to the sea, and that he never quitted his system of iniquity; but that it survived his political life itself. One of his last political acts was this:

Your lordships will remember, that Mr. Goodlad was sent up into the country, whose conduct was terrible indeed; for

that he could not be in place and authority in that country, and be innocent, while such things were doing, I shall prove: but that is not now my consideration.

The governour-general's minute, just read, is this, “I entirely acquit Mr. Goodlad of all the charges: he has disproved them. It was the duty of the accuser to prove them," (the accuser, namely, the commissioner.) "Whatever crimes may be established against rajah Debi Sing, it does not follow, that Mr. Goodlad was responsible for them; and I so well know the character," &c. &c. &c.

Now your lordships perceive he has acquitted Mr. Goodlad. He is clear. Be it, that he is fairly and conscientiously acquitted. But what is Mr. Hastings's account of rajah Debi Sing? He is presented to him in 1781 by Gunga Govin Sing, as a person, against whose character there could be no exception, and by him accepted in that light. Upon the occasion I have mentioned, Mr. Hastings's opinion of him is this; "I so well know the character and abilities of rajah Debi Sing, that I can easily conceive, that it was in his power both to commit the enormities, which are laid to his charge, and to conceal the grounds of them from Mr. Goodlad, who had no authority but that of receiving the accounts and rents of the district from rajah Debi Sing, and occasionally to be the channel of communication between him and the committee."

Thus your lordships see what Mr. Hastings's opinion of Debi Sing was.-We shall prove it at another time by abundance of clear and demonstrative evidence, that whether he was bad or no (but we shall prove, that bad he was indeed) even he could hardly be so bad as he was in the opinion, which Mr. Hastings entertained of him; who, notwithstanding, now disowns this mock committee, instituted by himself, but, in reality, entirely managed by Gunga Govin Sing. This Debi Sing was accepted as an unexceptionable man; and yet Mr. Hastings knows both his power of doing mischief, and his artifice in concealing it. If, then, Mr. Goodlad is to be acquitted, does it not show the evil of Mr. Hastings's conduct in destroying those provincial councils, which, as I have already stated, were obliged to book every thing,

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to minute all the circumstances, which came before them, together with all the consultations respecting them? He strikes at the whole system at once, and, instead of it, he leaves an Englishman under pretence of controulling Gunga Govin Sing's agent, appointed for the very purpose of giving him bribes, in a province, where Mr. Hastings says that agent had the power of committing such enormities, and which nobody doubts his disposition to commit.He leaves him, I say, in such a state of inefficiency, that these iniquities could be concealed (though every one true) from the person appointed there to inspect his conduct!—What then could be his business there? was it only to receive such sums of money as Debi Sing might put into his hands, and which might easily have been sent to Calcutta? Was he to be of use as a communication between Debi Sing and the committee, and in no other way? Here then we have that English authority, which Mr. Hastings left in the country: here the native authority which he settled, and the establishment of native iniquity in a regular system under Gunga Govin Sing here the destruction of all English inspection. I hope I need say no more to prove to your lordships, that this system, taken nakedly as it thus stands, founded in mystery and obscurity, founded for the very express purpose of conveying bribes, as the best mode of collecting the revenue, and supplying the company's exigencies through Gunga Govin Sing, would be iniquitous upon the face and the statement of it. But when your lordships consider what horrid effects it produced, you will easily see what the mischief and abomination of Mr. Hastings's destroying these provincial councils, and protecting these persons, must necessarily be. If you had not known in theory, you must have seen it in practice.

But when both practice and theory concur, there can be no doubt, that a system of private bribery for a revenue, and of private agency for a constitutional government, must ruin the country, where it prevails; must disgrace the country, that uses it, and finally end in the destruction of the reveFor what says Mr. Hastings? I was to have received 40,0001. in bribes, and 30,000l. was actually applied to the

nue.