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a man possessed of 700,000l. he converted this guard into a retinue of honour their bayonets were lowered, their musquets laid aside; they attended him with their side arms, and many with silver verges in their hand, to mark him out rather as a great magistrate attended by a retinue, than a prisoner under guard.

When he was ordered to send a vakeel to defend his conduct, he refused to send him. Upon which the commissioners, instead of saying, "If you will not send your agent, we will proceed in our inquiry without him," (and indeed it was not made necessary by the commission, that he should be there either by vakeel or otherwise,) condescendingly admitted his refusal, and suffered him to come up in person. He accordingly enters the province, attended with his guard, in the manner I have before mentioned, more as a person returning in triumph from a great victory, than as a man under the load of all those enormous charges, which I have stated. He enters the province in this manner; and Mr. Paterson, who saw himself lately the representative of the India company (an old servant of the company is a great man in that country,) was now left naked, destitute, without any mark of official situation or dignity. He was present, and saw all the marks of imprisonment turned into marks of respect and dignity to this consummate villain, whom I have the misfortune of being obliged to introduce to your lordships' notice. Mr. Paterson, seeing the effect of the proceeding every where, seeing the minds of the people broken, subdued and prostrate under it, and that so far from having the means of detecting the villanies of this insolent criminal, appearing as a magistrate, he had not the means of defending even his own innocence, because every kind of information fled and was annihilated before him, represented to these young commissioners, that this appearance of authority tended to strike terrour into the hearts of the natives, and to prevent his receiving justice. The council of Calcutta took this representation into their deliberate consideration; they found, that it was true, that, if he had such an attendance any longer in this situation, (and a large attendance it was, such as the chancellour of this kingdom, or the speaker of the House of Commons

does not appear with,) it would have an evil appearance. On the other hand, say they, "if he should be left under a guard, the people would consider him as under disgrace.” They therefore took a middle way, and ordered the guard not to attend him with fixed bayonets, which had the appearance of the custody of a prisoner, but to lower their musquets, and unfix their bayonets.

The next step of these commissioners is to exclude Mr. Paterson from all their deliberations; and, in order that both parties might be put on an equality, one would naturally conclude, that the culprit Debi Sing was likewise excluded. Far from it he sat upon the bench. Need I say any more upon this subject? The protection followed.

In this situation, Mr. Paterson wrote one of the most pathetick memorials, that ever was penned, to the council of Calcutta, submitting to his hard fate, but standing inflexibly to his virtue, that brought it upon him. To do the man justice, he bore the whole of this persecution like an hero. He never tottered in his principles, nor swerved to the right, or to the left, from the noble cause of justice and humanity, in which he had been engaged; and when your lordships come to see his memorials you will have reason to observe, that his abilities are answerable to the dignity of his cause, and make him worthy of every thing that he had the honour to suffer for it.

To cut short the thread of this shocking series of corruption, oppression, fraud and chicanery, which lasted for upwards of four years; Paterson remains without employ. ment: The inhabitants of great provinces, whose substance and whose blood was sold by Mr. Hastings, remain without redress. And the purchaser Debi Sing, that corrupt, iniquitous and bloody tyrant, instead of being proceeded against by the committee in a civil suit for retribution to the sufferers, is handed over to the false semblance of a trial, on a criminal charge, before a Mahomedan judge,-an equal judge, however. The judge was Mahomed Reza Khân, his original patron, and the author of all his fortunes;-a judge, who depends on him, as a debtor depends upon his creditor. To that judge is he sent, without a distinct charge, without a

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.

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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

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