"does not at this time demand any thing for the

gentlemen, and I have no ability to give them

any thing, yet the custom of the English gen"tlemen 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 recal 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 23,000l. 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 controul 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 shewn your Lordships, the

entire dependence of Oude on the British empire. I have shewn 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 suf fered 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 shewn 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 shewn 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 shewn you; and I cannot believe, that your Lordships will consider that we have trifled with your time, or strained our BB 4 comments

comments one jot beyond the strict measure of the text.

We have shewn you a horrible scene, arising from an astonishing combination of horrible circumstances. The order in which 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

OF

WARREN HASTINGS, ESQ.

SATURDAY, JUNE 7th, 1794.

FIFTH DAY OF THE REPLY.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS,

WE

E 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 Governour General. 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

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 every thing agreeably to Mr. Hastings's wishes.

"My dear Sir,-I have this day answered your publick letter in the form you seemed to 66 expect. I hope there is nothing 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-per"formance of the stipulations made on behalf "of the Nabob; though I do assure you I my"self 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 undoubt

edly considered it at the first view), as speci