Your Lordships will see that there are grounds for suspicion, not supported with the same evidence, but with evidence of great probability, that there was another entertainment given at the expense of another lac of rupees; and there is also great probability that Mr. Hastings received two lac of rupees, and Mr. Middleton another lac.  The whole of the Nabob’s revenues would have been exhausted by these two men, if they had stayed there a whole year:  and they stayed three months.  Nothing will be secured from the Company’s servants, so long as they can find, under this name, or under pretence of any corrupt custom of the country, a vicious excuse for this corrupt practice.  The excuse is worse than the thing itself.  I leave it, then, with your judgment to decide whether you will or not, if this justification comes before you, establish a principle which would put all Bengal in a worse situation than an hostile army could do, and ruin all the Company’s servants by sending them from their duty to go round robbing the whole country under the name of entertainments.

My Lords, I have now done with this first part,—­namely, the presumption arising from his refusal to make any defence, on pretence that the charge brought against him might be referred to a court of justice, and from the non-performance of his promise to give satisfaction to his employers,—­and when that pretence was removed, still refusing to give that satisfaction, though suffering as he did under a load of infamy and obloquy, and though urged to give it by persons of the greatest character.  I have stated this to your Lordships as the strongest presumption of guilt, and that this presumption is strengthened by the very excuse which he fabricated for a part of his bribes, when he knew that the proof of them was irresistible, and that this excuse is a high aggravation of his guilt,—­that this excuse is not supported by law, that it is not supported by reason, that it does not stand with his covenant, but carries with it a manifest proof of corruption, and that it cannot be justified by any principle, custom, or usage whatever.  My Lords, I say I have done with the presumption arising from his conduct as it regarded the fact specifically charged against him, and with respect to the relation he stood in to the Court of Directors, and from the attempt he made to justify that conduct.  I believe your Lordships will think both one and the other strong presumptions of his criminality, and of his knowledge that the act he was doing was criminal.

I have another fact to lay before your Lordships, which affords a further presumption of his guilt, and which will show the mischievous consequences of it; and I trust your Lordships will not blame me for going a little into it.  Your Lordships know we charge that the appointment of such a woman as Munny Begum to the guardianship of the Nabob, to the superintendency of the civil justice of the country, and to the representation