are put to their proper test, and the works of darkness tried in the face of day-not the corrupted opinions of others on them, but their own intrinsic merits. We charge it as his crime, that he bribed the court of directors to thank him for what they had condemned as breaches of his duty.

The East-India Company, it is true, have thanked him. They ought not to have done it; and it is a reflection upon their character that they did it. But the directors praise him in the gross, after having condemned each act in detail. His actions are all, every one, censured one by one as they arise. I do not recollect any one transaction, few there are I am sure, in the whole body of that succession of crimes now brought before you for your judgment, in which the India Company have not censured him. Nay, in one instance he pleads their censure in bar of this trial; for he says, "In that censure I have already received my punishment." If, for any other reasons, they come and say, "We thank you, Sir, for all your services: To that I answer yes; and I would thank him for his services too, if I knew them. But I do not; perhaps they do. Let them thank him for those services. I am ordered to prosecute him for these crimes. Here, therefore, we are on a balance with the India Company; and your lordships may perhaps think it some addition to his crimes, that he has found means to obtain the thanks of the India Company for the whole of his conduct, at the same time that their records are full of constant, uniform, particular censure and reprobation of every one of those acts for which he now stands accused.

He says there is the testimony of Indian princes in his favour. But do we not know how seals are obtained in that country? do we not know how those princes are imposed upon? do we not know the subjection and thraldom in which they are held, and that they are obliged to return thanks for the sufferings which they have felt? I believe your lordships will think that there is not, with regard to some of these princes, a more dreadful thing that can be said of them, than that he has obtained their thanks.

I understand he has obtained the thanks of the miserable princesses of Oude, whom he has cruelly imprisoned, whose

1 See Mr. Hastings's answer to the first charge.

treasure he has seized, and whose eunuchs he has tor tured.1

They thank him for going away. They thank him for leaving them the smallest trifle of their subsistence; and I venture to say, if he wanted a hundred more panegyrics, provided he never came again among them, he might have them. I understand that Mahdajee Scindia has made his panegyric too. Mahdajee Scindia has not made his panegyric for nothing; for, if your lordships will suffer him to enter into such a justification, we shall prove that he has sacrificed the dignity of this country, and the interests of all its allies, to that prince. We appear here neither with panegyric nor with satire; it is for substantial crimes we bring him before you, and amongst others for cruelly using persons of the highest rank and consideration in India; and, when we prove he has cruelly injured them, you will think the panegyrics either gross forgeries or most miserable aggravations of his offences, since they show the abject and dreadful state into which he has driven those people. For, let it be proved that I have cruelly robbed and maltreated any persons, if I produce a certificate from them of my good behaviour, would it not be a corroborative proof of the terror into which those persons are thrown by my misconduct ?

My lords, these are, I believe, the general grounds of our charge; I have now closed completely, and I hope to your lordships' satisfaction, the whole body of history of which I wished to put your lordships in possession. I do not mean, that many of your lordships may not have known it more perfectly by your own previous inquiries; but bringing to your remembrance the state of the circumstances of the persons with whom he acted, the persons and power he has abused,—I have gone to the principles he maintains, the precedents he quotes, the laws and authorities which he refuses to abide by, and those on which he relies, and at last I have refuted all those pleas in bar, on which he depends, and for the effect of which he presumes on the indulgence and patience of this country, or on the corruption of some persons in it. And here I close what I had to say upon this subject; wishing and hoping that when I open before your

1 A Latin sentence, which was quoted here, is omitted in the MS. of the short-hand writer. Ed.

lordships the case more particularly, so as to state rather a plan of the proceeding, than the direct proof of the crimes, your lordships will hear me with the same goodness and indulgence I have hitherto experienced; that you will consider, if I have detained you long, it was not with a view of exhausting my own strength, or putting your patience to too severe a trial; but from the sense I feel, that it is the most difficult and the most complicated cause that was ever brought before any human tribunal. Therefore I was resolved to bring the whole substantially before you. now, if your lordships will permit me, I will state the method of my future proceeding, and the future proceeding of the gentlemen assisting me.

And

I mean first to bring before you the crimes as they are classed and are of the same species and genus; and how they mutually arose from one another. I shall first show, that Mr. Hastings's crimes had root in that which is the root of all evil, I mean avarice; that avarice and rapacity were the groundwork and foundation of all his other vicious system; that he showed it in setting to sale the native government of the country; in setting to sale the whole landed interest of the country; in setting to sale the British government and his own fellow servants, to the basest and wickedest of mankind. I shall then show your lordships, that when, in consequence of such a body of corruption and peculation, he justly dreaded the indignation of his country, and the vengeance of its laws, in order to raise himself a faction, embodied by the same guilt, and rewarded in the same manner, he has with a most abandoned profusion thrown away the revenues of the country to form such a faction here.

I shall next show your lordships, that, having exhausted the resources of the Company, and brought it to extreme difficulties within, he has looked to his external resources, as he calls them. He has gone up into the country. I will show, that he has plundered, or attempted to plunder, every person dependent upon, connected, or allied with this country.

We shall afterwards show what infinite mischief has followed in the case of Benares, upon which he first laid his hands; next, in the case of the Beguins of Oude.

We shall then lay before you the profligate system by

which he endeavoured to oppress that country, first by residents, next by spies under the name of British agents; and lastly, that, pursuing his way up to the mountains, he has found out one miserable chief, whose crimes were the prosperity of his country; that him he endeavoured to torture and destroy,-I do not mean in his body, but by exhausting the treasures which he kept for the benefit of his people.

In short, having shown your lordships that no man, who is in his power, is safe from his arbitrary will; that no man, within or without, friend, ally, rival, has been safe from him; having brought it to this point-if I am not able in my own person immediately to go up into the country, and show the ramifications of the system (I hope and trust I shall be spared to take my part in pursuing him through both, if I am not), I shall go at least to the root of it; and some other gentleman, with a thousand times more ability than I possess, will take up each separate part in its proper order. And I believe it is proposed by the managers, that one of them shall, as soon as possible, begin with the affair of Benares.

The point I now mean first to bring before your lordships is the corruption of Mr. Hastings, his system of peculation and bribery; and to show your lordships the horrible consequences which resulted from it: for, at first sight, bribery and peculation do not seem to be so horrid a matter; they may seem to be only the transferring a little money out of one pocket into another; but I shall show, that by such a system of bribery the country is undone.

I shall inform your lordships in the best manner I can, and afterwards submit the whole, as I do with a cheerful heart and with an easy and assured security, to that justice which is the security for all the other justice in the kingdom.

TRIAL.

FIFTH DAY, 17TH FEBRUARY, 1788.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS,-The gentlemen who are appointed by the Commons to manage this prosecution have directed me to inform your lordships, that they have very carefully and attentively weighed the magnitude of the subject which they bring before you, with the time which the nature and circumstances of affairs allow for their conducting it.

My lords, on that comparison they are very apprehensive, that if I should go very largely into a preliminary explanation of the several matters in charge, it might be to the prejudice of an early trial of the substantial merits of each article. We have weighed and considered this maturely. We have compared exactly the time with the matter, and we have found that we are obliged to do, as all men must do who would manage their affairs practicably, to make our opinion of what might be most advantageous to the business conform to the time that is left to perform it in. We must, as all men must, submit affairs to time, and not think of making time conform to our wishes: and therefore, my lords, I very willingly fall in with the inclinations of the gentlemen with whom I have the honour to act, to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple immediately and directly with the corruptions of India; to bring before your lordships the direct articles; to apply the evidence to the articles, and to bring the matter forward for your lordships' decision in that manner which the confidence we have in the justice of our cause demands from the Commons of Great Britain.

esce.

lord

My lords, these are the opinions of those with whom I have the honour to act, and in their opinions I readily acquiFor I am far from wishing to waste any of your ships' time upon any matter merely through any opinion I have of the nature of the business, when at the same time I find, that in the opinion of others it might militate against