At present I do not think it necessary, because it would be doing more than enough, it would be slaying the slain, to show your Lordships what Mr. Hastings’s motives were in acting against the sense of the East India Company, appointed by an act of Parliament to control him,—­that he did it for a corrupt purpose, that all his pretences were false and fraudulent, and that he had his own corrupt views in the whole of the proceeding.  But in the statement which I have given of this matter, I beg your Lordships to observe the instruments with which Mr. Hastings acts.  The great men of that country, and particularly the Subahdar himself, the Nabob, are and is in so equivocal a situation, that it afforded him two bolting-holes, by which he is enabled to resist the authority of the Company, and exercise an arbitrary authority of his own:  for, though the Nabob has the titles of high sovereignty, he is the lowest of all dependants; he appears to be the master of the country,—­he is a pensioner of the Company’s government.

When Mr. Hastings wants him to obey and answer his corrupt purposes, he finds him in the character of a pensioner:  when he wants his authority to support him in opposition to the authority of the Company, immediately he invests him with high sovereign powers, and he dare not execute the orders of the Company for fear of doing some act that will make him odious in the eyes of God and man.  We see how he appointed all officers for him, and forbade his interference in all affairs.  When the Company see the impropriety and the guilt of these acts, and order him to rescind them, and appoint again Mahomed Reza Khan, he declares he will not, that he cannot do it in justice, but that he will consent to send him the order of the Company, but without backing it with any order of the board:  which, supposing even there had been no private communication, was, in other words, commanding him to disobey it.  So this poor man, who a short time before was at the feet of Mr. Hastings, whom Mr. Hastings declared to be a pageant, and swore in a court of justice that he was but a pageant, and followed that affidavit with long declarations in Council that he was a pageant in sovereignty, and ought in policy ever to be held out as such,—­this man he sets up in opposition to the Company, and refuses to appoint Mahomed Reza Khan to the office which was guarantied to him by the express faith of the Company, pledged to his support.  Will any man tell me that this resistance, under such base, though plausible pretences, could spring from any other cause than a resolution of persisting systematically in his course of corruption and bribery through Munny Begum?