to sleep from this moment, till the time when it shall come before you; though I suspect, and have had reason (sitting in committees in the House of Commons) to believe, that there was in the India House a bond of iniquity, somewhere or other, which was able to impose in the first instance upon the solicitor, the guilt of which, being of another nature, I shall state hereafter, that your Lordships may be able to discover through whose means and whose fraud Mr. Hastings obtained these opinions.

If, however, all the great lawyers had been unanimous upon that occasion, still it would have been necessary for Mr. Hastings to say, “I cannot, according to my opinion, be brought to give an account in a court of justice, and I have got great lawyers to declare, that, upon the case laid before them, they cannot advise a prosecution; but now is the time for me to come forward, and, being no longer in fear that my defence may be turned against me, I will produce my defence for the satisfaction of my masters and the vindication of my own character.”  But besides this doubtful opinion (for I believe your Lordships will find it no better than a doubtful opinion) given by persons for whom I have the highest honor, and given with a strong censure upon the state of the case, there were also some great lawyers, men of great authority in the kingdom, who gave a full and decided opinion that a prosecution ought to be instituted against him; but the Court of Directors decided otherwise, they overruled those opinions, and acted upon the opinions in favor of Mr. Hastings.  When, therefore, he knew that the great men in the law were divided upon the propriety of a prosecution, but that the Directors had decided in his favor, he was the more strongly bound to enter into a justification of his conduct.

But there was another great reason which should have induced him to do this.  One great lawyer, known to many of your Lordships, Mr. Sayer, a very honest, intelligent man, who had long served the Company and well knew their affairs, had given an opinion concerning Mr. Hastings’s conduct in stopping these prosecutions.  There was an abstract question put to Mr. Sayer, and other great lawyers, separated from many of the circumstances of this business, concerning a point which incidentally arose; and this was, whether Mr. Hastings, as Governor-General, had a power so to dissolve the Council, that, if he declared it dissolved, they could not sit and do any legal and regular act.  It was a great question with the lawyers at the time, and there was a difference of opinion on it.  Mr. Sayer was one of those who were inclined to be of opinion that the Governor-General had a power of dissolving the Council, and that the Council could not legally sit after such dissolution.  But what was his remark upon Mr. Hastings’s conduct?—­and you must suppose his remark of more weight, because, upon the abstract question, he had given his opinion in favor of Mr. Hastings’s