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Now your Lordships see the whole of the revolutions.  I have stated them, I trust, with perspicuity,—­stated the grounds and principles upon which they were made,—­stated the abuses that grew upon them,—­and that every revolution produced its abuse.  You saw the native government vanish by degrees, until it was reduced to a situation fit for nothing but to become a private perquisite, as it has been, to Mr. Hastings, and to be granted to whom he pleased.  The English government succeeded, at the head of which Mr. Hastings was placed by an act of Parliament, having before held the office of President of the Council,—­the express object of both these appointments being to redress grievances; and within these two periods of his power, as President and Governor-General, were those crimes committed of which he now stands accused.  All this history is merely by way of illustration:  his crimination begins from his nomination to the Presidency; and we are to consider how he comported himself in that station, and in his office of Governor-General.

The first thing, in considering the merits or demerits of any governor, is to have some test by which they are to be tried.  And here, my Lords, we conceive, that, when a British governor is sent abroad, he is sent to pursue the good of the people as much as possible in the spirit of the laws of this country, which in all respects intend their conservation, their happiness, and their prosperity.  This is the principle upon which Mr. Hastings was bound to govern, and upon which he is to account for his conduct here.  His rule was, what a British governor, intrusted with the power of this country, was bound to do or to forbear.  If he has performed and if he has abstained as he ought, dismiss him honorably acquitted from your bar; otherwise condemn him.  He may resort to other principles and to other maxims; but this country will force him to be tried by its laws.  The law of this country recognizes that well-known crime called misconduct in office; it is a head of the law of England, and, so far as inferior courts are competent to try it, may be tried in them.  Here your Lordships’ competence is plenary:  you are fully competent both to inquire into and to punish the offence.

And, first, I am to state to your Lordships, by the direction of those whom I am bound to obey, the principles on which Mr. Hastings declares he has conducted his government,—­principles which he has avowed, first in several letters written to the East India Company, next in a paper of defence delivered to the House of Commons explicitly, and more explicitly in his defence before your Lordships.  Nothing in Mr. Hastings’s proceedings is so curious as his several defences; and nothing in the defences is so singular as the principles upon which he proceeds.  Your Lordships will have to decide not only upon a large, connected, systematic train of misdemeanors, but an equally connected system of principles and