college. It is a very strange thing that Rajah Nobkissin, who is a Gentoo, should be employed by Mr. Hastings to found a Mahomedan college. We will allow Mr. Hastings, who is a Christian, or would be thought a Christian, to grow pious at last; and as many others have done, who have spent their lives in fraud, rapacity and peculation, to seek amends, and to expiate his crimes, by charitable foundations. Nay, we will suppose Mr. Hastings to have taken it into his head, to turn Mahomedan (Gentoo he could not) and to have designed, by a Mahomedan foundation, to expiate his offences. Be it so; but why should Nobkissin pay for it? We will pass over this also. But when your Lordships shall hear of what nature that foundation was, I believe you will allow that a more extraordinary history never did appear in the world.

In the first place, he stated to the Council on the 18th of April 1781, that in the month of November 1780 a petition was presented to him by a considerable number of Mussulmen; in compliance with which this Mahomedan college appears to have been founded. It next appears from his statement, that in the April following, (that is within about six months after the foundation,) many students had finished their education. You see what a hot bed bribery and corruption is; our universities cannot furnish

an

an education in six years. In India they have completed it within six months and have taken their degrees.

were ;

Mr. Hastings says, I have supported this establishment to this time at my own expence, I desire the Company will now defray the charge of it. He then calculates what the expences he calculates that the building would cost about 6,000l. and he gets from the Company a bond to raise money for paying this 6,000. You apparently have the building now at the publick expence, and Mr. Hastings still stands charged with the expence of the college for six months. He then proposes that a tract of land should be given for the college, to the value of about three thousand odd pounds a year; and that in the mean time there should be a certain sum allotted for its expences. After this Mr, Hastings writes a letter from the Ganges to the Company, in which he says not a word about the expence of the building; but says that the college was founded and maintained at his own expence, though it was thought to be maintained by the Company; and he fixes the commence, ment of the expence in September 1779. But after all, we find that the very professor who was to be settled there, never so much as arrived in Calcutta, or shewed his face there, till some time afterwards. And look at Mr. Larkins pri

vate accounts, and you will find that he charges the expence to have commenced not until October 1781. It is no errour, because it runs through and is so accounted in the whole; and it thus appears, that he has charged, falsely and fraudulently, a year more for that establishment than it cost him.

At last then, when he was coming away, (for I hasten to the conclusion of an affair ludicrous indeed in some respects, but not unworthy of your Lordships' consideration,) "after the mark

ing that he had experienced for three years "the utility of this institution, he recommends "that they will establish a fund for 3,000 1.

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a year for it, and give it to the master." He had left Gunga Govin Sing as a Gentoo legacy, and he now leaves the Mussulman as a Mahomedan legacy to the Company. Your Lordships shall now hear what was the upshot of the whole. The Company soon afterwards hearing that this college was become the greatest nuisance in Calcutta, and that it had raised the cries of all the inhabitants against it; one of their servants, a Mr. Chapman, was deputed by the Governour, Sir John Shore, to examine into it, and your Lordships will find the account he gives of it in your Minutes. In short, my Lords, we find that this was a seminary of robbers, house-breakers, and every nuisance to society, so that the ComVOL. XVI. Ꮓ

pany

pany was obliged to turn out the master, and to remodel the whole. Your Lordships will now judge of the merits and value of this, one of the sets-off brought forward by the Prisoner, against the charges which we have brought forward against him; it began in injustice and peculation, and ended in a seminary for robbers and housebreakers.

Nothing now remains to be pressed by me upon your Lordships' consideration, but the account given by the late Governour General Earl Cornwallis, of the state in which he found the country left by his predecessor Mr. Hastings the Prisoner at your bar. But patient as I know your Lordships to be, I also know that your .strength is not inexhaustible, and though what I have farther to add will not consume much of your Lordships' time, yet I conceive that there is a necessity for deferring it to another day.

[Adjourned.

TRIAL

OF

WARREN HASTINGS, ESQ.

MONDAY, JUNE 16th, 1794.

NINTH DAY OF THE REPLY.

(MR. BURKE.)

I

MY LORDS,

SHOULD think it necessary to make an apology to your Lordships, for appearing before you one day more, if I were inclined to measure this business, either by the standard of my own ability, or by my own impatience, or by any supposed impatience of yours. I know no measure in such a case, but the nature of the subject and the duty which we owe to it. You will therefore, my Lords, permit me, in a few words, to lead you back to what we did yesterday, that you may the better comprehend the manner in which I mean to conclude the business to-day.

My Lords, we took the liberty of stating to you the condition of Bengal, before our taking possession

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