have no exception of circumstances in them, no difference quoad majus et minus, but every one, who offends against the law, is liable to the law. The consequence is this;he, who has deviated but an inch from the straight line, he, who has taken but one penny of unlawful emolument—and all have taken many pennies of unlawful emolument does not dare to complain of the most abandoned extortion and cruel oppression in any of his fellow-servants. He, who has taken a trifle perhaps as the reward of a good action, is obliged to be silent, when he sees whole nations desolated around him. The great criminal, at the head of the service, has the laws in his hand; he is always able to prove the small offence, and crush the person, who has committed it. This is one grand source of Mr. Hastings's power. After he had got the better of the parliamentary commission, no complaint from any part of the service has appeared against Mr. Hastings. He is bold enough to state it as one presumption of his merit, that there has been no such complaint. No such complaint, indeed, can exist. The spirit of the corps would, of itself, almost forbid it; to which spirit an informer is the most odious and detestable of all characters, and is hunted down, and has always been hunted down, as a common enemy. But here is a new security. Who can complain, or dares to accuse? The whole service is irregular: nobody is free from small offences; and, as I have said, the great offender can always crush the small one. If you examine the correspondence of Mr. Hastings, you would imagine, from many expressions very deliberately used by him, that the company's service was made out of the very filth and dregs of human corruption; but, if you examine his conduct towards the corrupt body he describes, you would imagine he had lived in the speculative schemes of visionary perfection.

He was fourteen years at the head of that service; and there is not an instance, no, not one single instance, in which he endeavoured to detect corruption or that he ever, in any one single instance, attempted to punish it; but the whole service, with that whole mass of enormity, which he attributes to it, slept, as it were, at once under his terrour

and his protection;-under his protection, if they did not dare to move against him; under terrour, from his power to pluck out individuals, and make a publick example of them, whenever he thought fit. And therefore that service, under his guidance and influence, was, beyond even what its own nature disposed it to, a service of confederacy, a service of connivance, a service composed of various systems of guilt, of which Mr. Hastings was the head and the protector. But this general connivance he did not think sufficient to secure to him the general support of the Indian interest. He went further. We shall prove to your lordships, that, when the company were driven by shame, not by inclination, to order several prosecutions against delinquents in their service, Mr. Hastings, directly contrary to the duty of his office, -directly contrary to the express and positive law of the court of directors, which law parliament had bound upon him as his rule of action,-not satisfied with his long tacit connivance, ventured, before he left his government and among his last acts, to pass a general act of pardon and indemnity, and at once ordered the whole body of the prosecutions, directed by his masters, the company, to be discharged.

Having had fourteen years lease of connivance to bestow, and giving, at the end, a general release of all suits and actions, he now puts himself at the head of a vast body enriched by his bounties, connivances and indemnities, and expects the support of those, whom he had thus fully rewarded, and discharged from the pursuit of the laws. You will find, in the course of this business, that when charges have been brought against him of any bribery, corruption, or other malversation, his course has been to answer little or nothing to that specifick bribery, corruption, or malversation; his way has been to call on the court of directors to inquire of every servant, who comes to Europe, and to say, whether there was any one man in it, that will give him an ill word. He has put himself into a situation, in which he may always safely call to his character, and will always find himself utterly incapable of justifying his conduct. So far I have troubled your lordships with the sys

tem of confederacy and connivance, which, under his auspices, was the vital principle of almost the whole service.

There is one member of the service, which I have omitted; but whether I ought to have put it first, or, as I do now, last, I must confess I am at some loss; because, though it appears to be the lowest (if any regular) part of the service, it is by far the most considerable, and the most efficient; without a full consideration and explanation of which hardly any part of the conduct of Mr. Hastings, and of many others, that may be in his situation, can be fully understood.

I have given your lordships an account of writers, factors, merchants, who exercise the office of judges, lord chancellors, chancellors of the exchequer, ministers of state, and managers of great revenues. But there is another description of men, of more importance than them all, a description you have often heard of, but which has not been sufficiently explained; I mean, the banyan. When the company's service was no more than mercantile, and the servants were generally unacquainted with the country, they used the intervention of certain factors among the natives, which were called banyans; we called them so, because they were of the tribe, or cast of the banyans or merchants, the Indians being generally distributed into trades according to their tribes. The name still continues, when the functions of the banyans are totally altered. The banyan is known by other appellations. He is called dewan or steward; and, indeed, this is a term with more propriety applied to him in several of his functions. He is, by his name of office, the steward of the household of the European gentleman: he has the management of his affairs, and the ordering of his servants. He is himself a domestick servant, and generally chosen out of that class of natives, who, by being habituated to misery and subjection, can submit to any orders, and are fit for any of the basest services. Trained under oppression (it is the true education) they are fit to oppress others. They serve an apprenticeship of servitude, to qualify them for the trade of tyranny. They know all the devices, all the little frauds, all the artifices and contrivances, the whole panoply of the defensive armour, by which ingenious slavery

secures itself against the violence of power. They know all the lurking holes, all the winding recesses, of the unfortunate; and they hunt out distress and misery, even to their last retreats. They have suffered themselves; but, far from being taught by those sufferings to abstain from rigour, they have only learned the methods of afflicting their fellow slaves. They have the best intelligence of what is done in England. The moment a company's servant arrives in India, and his English connexions are known to be powerful, some of that class of people immediately take possession of him, as if he were their inheritance. They have knowledge of the country, and its affairs; they have money; they have the arts of making money. The gentleman, who comes from England, has none of these; he enters into that world, as he enters into the world at large, naked. His portion is

great simplicity, great indigence, and a strong disposition to relieve himself. The banyan, once in possession, employs his tyranny, not only over the native people of his country, but often over the master himself, who has little other share in the proceedings of his servant, but in giving him the ticket of his name to mark, that he is connected with, and supported by, an European, who is himself well connected and supported at home. This is a commission, which nothing can resist. From that moment forward, it is not the Englishman, it is the black banyan, that is the master. The nominal master often lives from his hand. We know how young men are sent out of this country: we know how happy we are to hear soon, that they are no longer a burthen to their friends and parents. The banyan knows it too. He supplies the young servant with money. He has him under his power; first, from the necessity of employing such a man; and next, (and this is the more important of the two) he has that dreadful power over his master, which every creditor has over his debtor. Actions, the most abhorrent to his nature, he must see done before his face; and thousands and thousands worse are done in his absence, and he dare not complain. The banyan extorts, robs, plunders, and then gives him just what proportion of the spoil he pleasIf the master should murmur, the very power, that was

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sent over to protect the people of India from these very abuses (the best things being perverted, when applied to unknown objects and put into unsuitable situations)—the very laws of England, by making the recovery of debts more easy, infinitely increase the power of the banyan over his masThus the supreme court of justice, the destined corrector of all abuses, becomes a collateral security for that abominable tyranny exercised by the monied banyans over So that, while we are Europeans as well as the natives. here boasting of the British power in the east, we are in perhaps more than half our service nothing but the inferiour, miserable instruments of the tyranny, which the lowest part of the natives of India exercise to the disgrace of the British authority, and to the ruin of all, that is respectable among their own countrymen. They have subverted the first houses, totally ruined and undone the country, cheated and defrauded the revenue; the master a silent, sometimes a melancholy spectator, until some office of high emolument has emancipated him. This has often been the true reason, that the company's servants in India, in order to free themselves from this horrid and atrocious servitude, are obliged to become instruments of another tyranny, and must prostitute themselves to men in power, in order to obtain some office, that may enable them to escape the servitudes below, and enable them to pay their debts. And thus many have become the instruments of Mr. Hastings.

These banyans or dewans were originally among the lower casts in the country. But now it is true, that, after seeing the power and profits of these men; that there is neither power, profession, nor occupation to be had, which a reputable person can exercise, but through that channel; men of higher casts, and born to better things, have thrown themselves into that disgraceful servitude, have become menial servants to Englishmen, that they might rise by their degradation. But whoever they are, or of whatever birth, they have equally prostituted their integrity; they have equally lost their character; and, once entered into that course of life, there is no difference between the best casts and the worst. That system Mr. Hastings confirmed, established,