He has given to this woman the charge of all the disbursements of the Company; the officer whom you would imagine would be responsible was not responsible, but to this prostitute and dancing-girl the whole of the revenue was given; when he was ordered to transmit that account, he not only did not produce that account, but had given no order that it should be kept:  so that no doubt can be left upon your Lordships’ minds, that the sixteen lac, which were reserved for the support of the dignity of the government of that country, were employed for the purpose of Mr. Hastings’s having a constant bank, from which he should draw every corrupt emolument he should think fit for himself and his associates.  Thus your Lordships see that he appointed an improper person to the trust without any control, and that the very accounts which were to be the guardians of his purity, and which were to remove suspicion from him, he never so much as directed or ordered.  If any one can doubt that that transaction was in itself corrupt, I can only say that his mind must be constituted in a manner totally different from that which prevails in any of the higher or lower branches of judicature in any country in the world.  The suppression of an account is a proof of corruption.

When Mr. Hastings committed these acts of violence against Mahomed Reza Khan, when he proceeded to make arrangements in the Company’s affairs of the same kind with those in which corruption had been before exercised, he was bound by a particular responsibility that there should be nothing mysterious in his own conduct, and that at least all the accounts should be well kept.  He appointed a person nominally for that situation,—­namely, the Rajah Gourdas.  Who was he?  A person acting, he says, under the influence of Rajah Nundcomar, whom he had declared was not fit to be employed or trusted:  all the offices were filled by him.  But had Rajah Gourdas, whose character is that of an excellent man, against whom there could lie no reasonable objection on account of his personal character, and whose want of talents was to be supplied by those of Nundcomar, (and of his parts Mr. Hastings spoke as highly as possible,)—­had he, I say, the management?  No:  but Munny Begum.  Did she keep any accounts?  No.

Mr. Hastings was ordered, and a very disagreeable and harsh order it was, to take away one half of the Nabob’s allowance which he had by treaty.  I do not charge Mr. Hastings with this reduction:  he had nothing to do with that.  Sixteen lac were cut off, and sixteen left; these two sums had been distributed, one for the support of the seraglio and the dignity of the state, the other for the court establishment and the household.  The sixteen lac which was left, therefore, required to be well economized, and well administered.  There was a rigor in the Company’s order relative to it, which was, that it should take place from an antedated time, that is, a whole year prior to the communication of their order to the Nabob.  The order was, that the Nabob’s stipend should be reduced to sixteen lac a year from the month of January.  Mr. Hastings makes this reflection upon it, in order to leave no doubt upon your mind of his integrity in administering that great trust:  he says,—­