judgment.  “The meeting of the Council depends on the pleasure of the Governor; and I think the duration of it must do so, too.  But it was as great a crime to dissolve the Council upon base and sinister motives as it would be to assume the power of dissolving, if he had it not.  I believe he is the first Governor that ever dissolved a Council inquiring into his behavior, when he was innocent.  Before he could summon three Councils and dissolve them, he had time fully to consider what would be the result of such conduct, to convince everybody, beyond a doubt, of his conscious guilt.”

Mr. Sayer, then, among other learned people, (and if he had not been the man that I have described, yet, from his intimate connection with the Company, his opinion must be supposed to have great weight,) having used expressions as strong as the persons who have ever criminated Mr. Hastings most for the worst of his crimes have ever used to qualify and describe them, and having ascribed his conduct to base and sinister motives, he was bound upon that occasion to justify that strong conduct, allowed to be legal, and charged at the same time to be violent.  Mr. Hastings was obliged then to produce something in his justification.  He never did.  Therefore, for all the reasons assigned by himself, drawn from the circumstances of prosecution and non-prosecution, and from opinions of lawyers and colleagues, the Court of Directors at the same time censuring his conduct, and strongly applauding the conduct of those who were adverse to him, Mr. Hastings was, I say, from those accumulated circumstances, bound to get rid of the infamy of a conduct which could be attributed to nothing but base and sinister motives, and which could have no effect but to convince men of his consciousness that he was guilty.  From all these circumstances I infer that no man could have endured this load of infamy, and to this time have given no explanation of his conduct, unless for the reason which this learned counsel gives, and which your Lordships and the world will give, namely, his conscious guilt.

After leaving upon your minds that presumption, not to operate without proof, but to operate along with the proof, (though, I take it, there are some presumptions that go the full length of proof,) I shall not press it to the length to which I think it would go, but use it only as auxiliary, assisting, and compurgatory of all the other evidences that go along with it.

There is another circumstance which must come before your Lordships in this business.  If you find that Mr. Hastings has received the two lac of rupees, then you will find that he was guilty, without color or pretext of any kind whatever, of acting in violation of his covenant, of acting in violation of the laws, and all the rules of honor and conscience.  If you find that he has taken the lac and a half, which he admits, but which he justifies under the pretence of an entertainment, I shall beg to say something to your Lordships concerning that justification.