justify evil actions, they will take good care that the most nefarious of their deeds shall never want a sufficient justification.  But then he calls upon his life and his character to oppose to his seal; and though he has declared that Mr. Holwell had intended ill to the Nabob, and that he approved of those measures, and only postponed them, yet he thought it necessary, he says, to quiet the fears of the Nabob; and from this motive he did an act abhorrent to his nature, and which, he says, he expressed his abhorrence of the morning after he signed it:  not that he did so; but if he had, I believe it would only have made the thing so many degrees worse.  Your Lordships will observe, that, in this conference, as stated by himself, these reasons and apologies for it did not appear, nor did they appear in the letter, nor anywhere else, till next year, when he came upon his trial.  Then it was immediately recollected that Mr. Holwell’s designs were so wicked they certainly must be known to the Nabob, though he never mentioned them in the conference of the morning or the evening of the 15th; yet such was now the weight and prevalence of them upon the Major’s mind, that he calls upon Mr. Hastings to know whether the Nabob was not informed of these designs of Mr. Holwell against him.  Mr. Hastings’s memory was not quite correct upon the occasion.  He does not recollect anything of the matter.  He certainly seems not to think that he ever mentioned it to the Nabob, or the Nabob to him; but he does recollect, he thinks, speaking something to some of the Nabob’s attendants upon it, and further this deponent sayeth not.  On this state of things, namely, the purity of intention, the necessities of the Company, the propriety of keeping the Nabob in perfect good-humor and removing suspicions from his mind, which suspicions he had never expressed, they came to the resolution I shall have the honor to read to you:  “That the representation, given in the said defence, of the state of the affairs of the country at that time” (that is, about the month of April, 1760) “is true and just” (that is, the bad state of the country, which we shall consider hereafter); “that, in such circumstances, the Nabob’s urgent account of his own distresses, the Colonel’s desire of making him easy,” (for here is a recapitulation of the whole defence,) “as the first thing necessary for the good of the service, and the suddenness of the thing proposed, might deprive him for a moment of his recollection, and surprise him into a measure which, as to the measure itself, he could not approve.  That such only were the motives which did or could influence Colonel Calliaud to assent to the proposal is fully evinced by the deposition of Captain Knox and Mr. Lushington, that his [Calliaud’s] conscience, at the time, never reproached him with a bad design.”

Your Lordships have heard of the testimony of a person to his own conscience; but the testimony of another man to any one’s conscience—­this is the first time, I believe, it ever appeared in a judicial proceeding.  It is natural to say, “My conscience acquits me of it”; but they declare, that “his conscience never reproached him with a bad design, and therefore, upon the whole, they are satisfied that his intention was good, though he erred in the measure.”