"this day, the payment of the Bahor Pescush,

although the right is incontestably against "them, and we have threatened to enforce it. "Both nations refuse to be bound by our decrees, or to submit to our regulations; they "refuse to submit to the payment of the duties "on the foreign commerce but in their own way, which amounts almost to a total exemp"tion; they refuse to submit to the duty of ten

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per cent which is levied upon foreign salt, by "which (unless a stop can be put to it by a more "decisive rule,) they will draw the whole of "that important trade into their own colonies; " and even in the single instance in which they "have allowed us to prescribe to them, namely, "the embargo on grain on the apprehension of " a dearth, I am generally persuaded that they "acquiesced from the secret design of taking "the advantage of the general suspension, by "exporting grain clandestinely under cover "of their colours which they knew would screen "them from the rigorous examination of our "officers. We are precluded from forming

many arrangements of general utility, because "of their want of controul over the European "settlement; and a great part of the defects " which subsist in the government and com"mercial state of the country are ultimately "derived from this source. I have not the slightest

P 4

slightest suspicion, that a more open and de"cided conduct would expose us to worse consequences from the European nations; on the contrary, we have the worst of the argument "while we contend with them under false "colours, while they know us under the disguise, " and we have not the confidence to disown it; "what we have done and may do under an "assumed character, is full as likely to involve

us in a war with France, a nation not much "influenced by logical weapons, if such can be "supposed to be the likely consequences of our "own trifling disagreement with them, as if we "stood forth their avowed opponents. To con"clude, instead of regretting with Mr. Francis, "the occasion which deprives us of so useless " and hurtful a disguise; I should rather

rejoice (were it really the case,) and con"sider it as a crisis which freed the constitution "of our government from one of its greatest "defects."

Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit. is no more-the great arcanum of the state is avowed-it is avowed that the government is ours that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed ours-that to foreign nations; and the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion, to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company.

Here

Here we perceive the exact and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate affidavit maker in a court of justice, and his indelicate declarations upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world, concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.

Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether his policy was right or wrong; hitherto we find the whole consistent, we find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which delicacy at first prevented him from producing, better recollection and more perfect policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob, your Lordships see, is dead-dead in law, dead in politicsdead in a court of justice--dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere animal existence, it is all over with him.

I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them?-Your Lordships I am sure will be glad to know what nostrum not hitherto pretended to by quacks in physick, by quacks in politicks, nor by quacks in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with flesh, and to give him life, activity and vigour,

vigour. My Lords, I am about to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy, as was never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the Court of Directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the Court of Directors but declare in favour of his own system and his own positions, and that very moment merely for the purpose of declaring his right of rebellion against the laws of his country, he counteracts them. Then these dead bones arise; or, to use a language more suitable to the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are all revived. "Are "these men dead?" asks Mr. Bayes's friend. "No," says he, they shall all get up and "dance immediately."-But in this ludicrous view of Mr. Hastings's conduct, your Lordships must not lose sight of its great importance. You cannot have, in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that better developes the principles of the man; that more fully developes all the sources of his conduct; and of all the frauds and iniquities which he has committed, in order at one and the same time to evade his duty to the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws of his country, and to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat the people that are under him.

My Lords, you have had an account of the person

person who represented the Nabob's dignity, Mahomed Reza Khan; you have heard of the rank he bore, the sufferings that he went through, his trial and honourable acquittal, and the Company's order that the first opportunity should be taken to appoint him Naib Soubah or deputy of the Nabob, and more especially to represent him in the administering of justice. Your Lordships are also acquainted with what was done in consequence of those orders by the Council General, in the restoration and re-establishment of the executive power in this person; not in the poor Nabob, a poor helpless, ill-bred, ill-educated boy, but in the first Mussulman of the country, who had before exercised the office of Naib Soubah or Deputy Viceroy, in order to give some degree of support to the expiring honour and justice of that country. The majority, namely, General Clavering, Colonel Monson and Mr. Francis, whose names as I have before said, will, for obedience to the Company, fidelity to the laws, honour to themselves, and a purity untouched and unimpeached, stand distinguished and honoured in spite of all the corrupt and barking virulence of India against them. These men, I say, obeyed the Company; they had no secret or fraudulent connexion with Mahomed Reza Khan; but they re-instated him in his office.

The