again declared to be his deliberate opinion in 1775 and in 1776. In the mean time a majority of the Supreme Council, consisting of members who had generally differed in opinion from Mr. Hastings, had transmitted their advice to the Court of Directors, recommending some changes in the system of Provincial Councils. The Directors, in their reply to this recommendation, did in 1777 order the Supreme Council to form a new plan for the collection of the revenues, and to transmit it to them for their consideration.

No such plan was transmitted; but in the year 1781, Mr. Hastings having obtained a majority in the Council, he again changed the whole system, both of collection of the revenue and of the executive administration of civil and criminal justice. And who were the persons substituted in the place of those whom he removed? Names, my Lords, with which you are already but too well acquainted. At their head stands Munny Begum; then comes his own domestick and private bribe agent Gunga Govin Sing; then his banyan Cantoo Baboo; then that instrument of all evil Deby Sing; then the whole tribe of his dependents white and black, whom he made farmers of the revenue, with Colonel Hannay at their head; and lastly, his confidential residents, secret agents, and private secretaries, Mr. Mid

dleton,

dleton, Major Palmer, &c. &c.-Can your Lordships doubt, for a single instant, of the real spirit of these proceedings? Can you doubt of the whole design having originated and ended in corruption and peculation?

We have fully stated to you, from the authority of these parties themselves, the effects and consequences of these proceedings-namely, the dilapidation of the revenues, and the ruin and desolation of the provinces. And, my Lords, what else could have been expected or designed by this sweeping subversion of the controul of the Company's servants over the collection of the revenue, and the vesting of it in a black duan, but fraud and peculation? What else, I say, was to be expected in the inextricable tùrnings and windings of that black mystery of iniquity, but the concealment of every species of wrong, violence, outrage and oppression? Your Lordships then have seen, that the whole country was put into the hands of Gunga Govin Sing; and when you remember who this Gunga Govin Sing was, and how effectually Mr. Hastings had secured him against detection, in every part of his mal-practices and atrocities, can you for a moment hesitate to believe that the whole project was planned and executed for the purpose of putting all Bengal under contribution to Mr. Hastings? But if you are resolved, after

all this, to entertain a good opinion of Mr. Hastings-if you have taken it into your heads, for reasons best known to yourselves, to imagine that he has some hidden virtues, which in the government of Bengal he has not displayed, and which, to us of the House of Commons, have not been discernible in any one single instance; these virtues may be fit subjects for paragraphs in newspapers-they may be pleaded for him by the partisans of his Indian faction. But your Lordships will do well to remember that it is not to Mr. Hastings himself that you are trusting, but to Gunga Govin Sing. If the committee were tools in his hands, must not Mr. Hastings have also been a tool in his hands?-If they with whom he daily and hourly had to transact business, and whose office it was to controul and restrain him, were unable so to do, is this controul and restraint to be expected from Mr. Hastings, who was his confident, and whose corrupt transactions he could at any time discover to the world? My worthy colleague has traced the whole of Mr. Hastings's bribe account, in the most clear and satisfactory manner to Gunga Govin Sing-him first-him last-him midst, and without end. If we fail of the conviction of the Prisoner at your bar, your Lordships will not have acquitted Mr. Hastings merely, but you will confirm all the robberies

and

and rapines of Gunga Govin Sing. You will recognise him as a faithful governour of India. Yes, my Lords, let us rejoice in this man. Let us adopt him as our own. Let our country -let this House be proud of him! If Mr. Hastings can be acquitted, we must admit Gunga Govin Sing's government to be the greatest blessing that ever happened to mankind. But if Gunga Govin Sing's government be the greatest curse that ever befel suffering humanity, as we assert it to have been, there is the man that placed him in it; there is his father, his godfather, the first author and origin of all these evils and calamities. My Lords, remember Dinagepore; remember the bribe of 40,000Z. which Gunga Govin Sing procured for Mr. Hastings in that province, and the subsequent horrour of that scene.

But, my Lords, do you extend your confidence. to Gunga Govin Sing? Not even the face of this man to whom the revenues of the Company, together with the estates, fortunes, reputations and lives of the inhabitants of that country were delivered over, is known in those provinces. He resides at Calcutta, and is represented by a variety of under agents. Do you know Govin Ghose? Do you know Nundalol? Do you know the whole tribe of peculators, whom Mr. Hastings calls his faithful domestick servants? Do you know all the persons that Gunga Govin Sing

must

must employ in the various ramifications of the revenues throughout all the provinces? Are you prepared to trust all these? The Board of Revenue has confessed that it could not controul them. Mr. Hastings himself could not controul them. The establishment of this system was like Sin's opening the gates of hell; like her he could open the gate, but to shut, as Milton says, exceeded his power. The former establishments, if defective, or if abuses were found in them, might have been corrected. There was at least the means of detecting and punishing abuse. But Mr. Hastings destroyed the means of doing either, by putting the whole country into the hands of Gunga Govin Sing.

Now, having seen all these things done, look to the account. You Lordships will now be pleased to look at this business, as a mere account of revenue. You will find, on comparing the three years in which Mr. Hastings was in the minority, with the three years after the appointment of this committee, that the assessment upon the country increased, but that the revenue was diminished; and you will also find, which is a matter that ought to astonish you, that the expences of the collections were encreased, by no less a sum than 500,000. You may judge from this what riot there was in rapacity and ravage, both amongst the European and native agents, but chiefly amongst the natives; for Mr. Hastings