And therefore here I close that part of the charge which relates to the business of Nundcomar.  Your Lordships will see such a body of presumptive proof and positive proof as never was given yet of any secret corrupt act of bribery; and there I leave it with your Lordships’ justice.  I beg pardon for having detained you so long; but your Lordships will be so good as to observe that no business ever was covered with more folds of iniquitous artifice than this which is now brought before you.

SPEECH

ON

THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.

SECOND DAY:  SATURDAY, APRIL 25, 1789.

My Lords,—­When I last had the honor of addressing your Lordships, I endeavored to state with as much perspicuity as the nature of an intricate affair would admit, and as largely as in so intricate an affair was consistent with the brevity which I endeavored to preserve, the proofs which had been adduced against Warren Hastings upon an inquiry instituted by an order of the Court of Directors into the corruption and peculation of persons in authority in India.  My Lords, I have endeavored to show you by anterior presumptive proofs, drawn from the nature and circumstances of the acts themselves inferring guilt, that such actions and such conduct could be referable only to one cause, namely, corruption; I endeavored to show you afterwards, my Lords, what the specific nature and extent of the corruption was, as far as it could be fully proved; and lastly, the great satisfactory presumption which attended the inquiry with regard to Mr. Hastings,—­namely, that, contrary to law, contrary to his duty, contrary to what is owed by innocence to itself, Mr. Hastings resisted that inquiry, and employed all the power of his office to prevent the exercise of it, either in himself or in others.  These presumptions and these proofs will be brought before your Lordships, distinctly and in order, at the end of this opening.

The next point on which I thought it necessary to proceed was relative to the presumptions which his subsequent conduct gave with regard to his guilt:  because, my Lords, his uniform tenor of conduct, such as must attend guilt, both in the act, at the time of the inquiry, and subsequent to it, will form such a body of satisfactory evidence as I believe the human mind is not made to resist.

My Lords, there is another reason why I choose to enter into the presumptions drawn from his conduct and the fact, taking his conduct in two parts, if it may be so expressed, omission and commission, in order that your Lordships should more fully enter into the consequences of this system of bribery.  But before I say anything upon that, I wish your Lordships to be apprised, that the Commons, in bringing this bribe of three lac and a half before your Lordships, do not wish by any means to have it understood that