You have heard how Mr. Hastings opposed the order of the Company, and on what account he opposed it.  On the 1st of September he sent an order to the Nabob, now become his subject, to give up this office to Mahomed Reza Khan:  an act which he had before represented as a dethroning of the Nabob.  The order went on the 1st of September, and on the 3d this great and mighty prince, whom all earth could not move from the assertion of his rights, gives them all up, and Mahomed Reza Khan is invested with them.  So there all his pretences were gone.  It is plain that what had been done before was for Munny Begum, and that what he now gave up was from necessity:  and it shows that the Nabob was the meanest of his servants; for in truth he ate his daily bread out of the hands of Mr. Hastings, through Munny Begum.

Mahomed Reza Khan was now invested again with his office; but such was the treachery of Mr. Hastings, that, though he wrote to the Nabob that this was done in consequence of the orders of the Company, he did clandestinely, according to his usual mode, assure the Nabob that Mahomed Reza Khan should not hold the place longer than till he heard from England.  He then wrote him another letter, that he should hold it no longer than while he submitted to his present necessity, (thus giving up to his colleague what he refused to the Company,) and engaged, privately, that he would dismiss Mahomed Reza Khan again.  And accordingly, the moment he thought Mr. Francis was not in a condition to give him trouble any longer, that moment he again turned out Mahomed Reza Khan from that general superintendence of affairs which the Company gave him, and deposed him as a minister, leaving him only a very confined authority as a magistrate.

All these changes, no less than four great revolutions, if I may so call them, were made by Mr. Hastings for his own corrupt purposes.  This is the manner in which Mr. Hastings has played with the most sacred objects that man ever had a dealing with:  with the government, with the justice, with the order, with the dignity, with the nobility of a great country:  he played with them to satisfy his own wicked and corrupt purposes through the basest instrument.

Now, my Lords, I have done with these presumptions of corruption with Munny Begum, and have shown that it is not a slight crime, but that it is attended with a breach of public faith, with a breach of his orders, with a breach of the whole English government, and the destruction of the native government, of the police, the order, the safety, the security, and the justice of the country,—­and that all these are much concerned in this cause.  Therefore the Commons stand before the face of the world, and say, We have brought a cause, a great cause, a cause worthy the Commons of England to prosecute, and worthy the Lords to judge and determine upon.