But there is another serious part (what is not so?) in this affair.  Let us suppose that the power for which Mr. Hastings contends, a power which no sovereign ever did or ever can vest in any of his subjects, namely, his own sovereign authority, to be conveyed by the act of Parliament to any man or body of men whatsoever; it certainly was never given to Mr. Hastings.  The powers given by the act of 1773 were formal and official; they were given, not to the Governor-General, but to the major vote of the board, as a board, on discussion amongst themselves, in their public character and capacity; and their acts in that character and capacity were to be ascertained by records and minutes of council.  The despotic acts exercised by Mr. Hastings were done merely in his private character; and, if they had been moderate and just, would still be the acts of an usurped authority, and without any one of the legal modes of proceeding which could give him competence for the most trivial exertion of power.  There was no proposition or deliberation whatsoever in council, no minute on record, by circulation or otherwise, to authorize his proceedings; no delegation of power to impose a fine, or to take any step to deprive the Rajah of Benares of his government, his property, or his liberty.  The minutes of consultation assign to his journey a totally different object, duty, and destination.  Mr. Wheler, at his desire, tells us long after, that he had a confidential conversation with him on various subjects, of which this was the principal, in which Mr. Hastings notified to him his secret intentions; “and that he bespoke his support of the measures which he intended to pursue towards him (the Rajah).”  This confidential discourse, and bespeaking of support, could give him no power, in opposition to an express act of Parliament, and the whole tenor of the orders of the Court of Directors.

In what manner the powers thus usurped were employed is known to the whole world.  All the House knows that the design on the Rajah proved as unfruitful as it was violent.  The unhappy prince was expelled, and his more unhappy country was enslaved and ruined; but not a rupee was acquired.  Instead of treasure to recruit the Company’s finances, wasted by their wanton wars and corrupt jobs, they were plunged into a new war, which shook their power in India to its foundation, and, to use the Governor’s own happy simile, might have dissolved it like a magic structure, if the talisman had been broken.

But the success is no part of my consideration, who should think just the same of this business, if the spoil of one rajah had been fully acquired, and faithfully applied to the destruction of twenty other rajahs.  Not only the arrest of the Rajah in his palace was unnecessary and unwarrantable, and calculated to stir up any manly blood which remained in his subjects, but the despotic style and the extreme insolence of language and demeanor, used to a person of great condition