to be an act equally insane and wicked, and as the one inexpiable crime of an Indian, the discovery of the money he gives,—­that Mr. Hastings had declaredly determined on his ruin, and to accomplish it had newly associated himself with one Mohun Persaud, a name I wish your Lordships to remember, a bitter enemy of his, an infamous person, whom Mr. Hastings knew to be such, and as such had turned him out of his house,—­that Mr. Hastings had lately recalled, and held frequent communications with this Mohun Persaud, the subject of which he had no doubt was his ruin.  In the year 1775 he was hanged by those incorrupt English judges who were sent to India by Parliament to protect the natives from oppression.

Your Lordships will observe that this new sale of the office of ministers succeeded to the sale of that of nabobs.  All these varied and successive sales shook the country to pieces.  As if those miserable exhausted provinces were to be cured of inanition by phlebotomy, while Cossim Ali was racking it above, the Company were drawing off all its nutriment below.  A dreadful, an extensive, and most chargeable war followed.  Half the northern force of India poured down like a torrent on Bengal, endangered our existence, and exhausted all our resources.  The war was the fruit of Mr. Hastings’s cabals.  Its termination, as usual, was the result of the military merit and the fortune of this nation.  Cossim Ali, after having been defeated toy the military genius and spirit of England, (for the Adamses, Monroes, and others of that period, I believe, showed as much skill and bravery as any of their predecessors,) in his flight swept away above three millions in money, jewels, or effects, out of a country which he had plundered and exhausted by his unheard-of exactions.  However, he fought his way like a retiring lion, turning his face to his pursuers.  He still fought along his frontier.  His ability and his money drew to his cause the Subahdar of Oude, the famous Sujah ul Dowlah.  The Mogul entered into these wars, and penetrated into the lower provinces on one side, whilst Bulwant Sing, the Rajah of Benares, entered them on another.  After various changes of party and changes of fortune, the loss which began in the treachery of the civil service was, as I have before remarked, redeemed by military merit.  Many examples of the same sort have since been seen.

Whilst these things were transacted in India, the Court of Directors in London, hearing of so many changes, hearing of such an incredible mass of perfidy and venality, knowing that there was a general market made of the country and of the Company, that the flame of war spread from province to province, that, in proportion as it spread, the fire glowed with augmented fierceness, and that the rapacity which originally gave rise to it was following it in all its progress,—­the Company, my Lords, alarmed not only for their acquisitions, but their existence, and finding themselves sinking