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

Mr. Hastings says, I have supported this establishment to this time at my own expense, I desire the company will now defray the charge of it. He then calculates what the expenses were; he calculates that the building would cost about £6,000, and he gets from the company a bond to raise money for paying this £6,000. You apparently have the building now at the public expense, and Mr. Hastings still stands charged with the expense 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 3,000 odd pounds a year; and that in the mean time there should be a certain sum allotted

for its expenses. After this Mr. Hastings writes a letter from the Ganges to the company, in which he says not a word about the expense of the building; but says that the college was founded and maintained at his own expense, though it was thought to be maintained by the company; and he fixes the commencement of the expense 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 showed his face there, till some time afterwards. And look at Mr. Larkins's private accounts, and you will find that he charges the expense to have commenced not until October, 1781. It is no error, 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 remarking that he had experienced for three years the utility of this institution, he recommends that they will establish a fund for £3,000 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 Mussulmen 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 governor, 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 company 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 house-breakers.

Nothing now remains to be pressed by me upon your lordships' consideration, but the account given by the late governor-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.

MONDAY, 16TH JUNE, 1794.

NINTH DAY OF REPLY.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS,-I 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 of it, and of the several classes of its inhabitants. We first brought before you the Mahomedan inhabitants, who had the judicial authority of the country in their hands; and we proved to you the utter ruin of that body of people, and with them of the justice of the country, by their being both one and the other sold to an infamous woman called Munny Begum. We next showed you, that the whole landed interest, the zeminda, or Hindoo gentry of the country, was likewise ruined by its being given over by letting it on a five years' lease to infamous farmers, and giving it up to their merciless exactions;

and afterwards by subjecting the rank of those zemindars, their title deeds, and all their pecuniary affairs, to the minutest scrutiny, under pain of criminal punishment, by a commission granted to a nefarious villain, called Gunga Govin Sing. We lastly showed you, that the remaining third class, that of the English, was partly corrupted, or had its authority dissolved, and that the whole superintending English control was subverted or subdued; that the products of the country were diminished, and that the revenues of the company were dilapidated, by an overcharge of expenses in four years, to the amount of £500,000, in consequence of these corrupt, dangerous, and mischievous projects.

We have farther stated, that the company's servants were corrupted by contracts and jobs; we proved, that those that were not so corrupted, were removed from their stations or reduced to a state of abject dependance; we showed you the destruction of the provincial councils; the destruction of the council general; and the formation of a committee for no other ends whatever, but for the purposes of bribery, concealment, and corruption. We next stated some of the most monstrous instances of that bribery; and though we were of opinion, that in none of them any satisfactory defence worth mentioning had been made, yet we have thought that this should not hinder us from recalling to your lordships' recollection the peculiar nature and circumstances of one of those proceedings.

The proceedings, to which we wish to call your attention, are those belonging to the second bribe given by the nabob of Oude to Mr. Hastings. Mr. Hastings's own knowledge and opinion, that that money was set apart for his use, either in bills or assets, I have before stated; and I now wish to call your lordships' minute recollection to the manner in which the fraudulent impeachment of Mr. Middleton, for the purpose of stifling an inquiry into that business, was carried on. Your lordships will remember that I proved to you, upon the face of that proceeding, the collusive nature of the