whole seraglio, that all the country, whom he had put under the dominion of Sir John D’Oyly, that all those people might have made a discovery of all his corrupt proceedings; he therefore gets the Nabob to appoint Sir John D’Oyly his agent here, with a view of stopping his mouth, and by the hope of another 160,000_l._ a year to prevent his giving an account of the dilapidation and robbery that was made of the 160,000_l._ which had been left him.

* * * * *

I have now finished what I proposed to say relative to his great fund of bribery, in the first instance of it,—­namely, the administration of justice in the country.  There is another system of bribery which I shall state before my friends produce the evidence.  He put up all the great offices of the country to sale; he makes use of the trust he had of the revenues in order to destroy the whole system of those revenues, and to bind them and make them subservient to his system of bribery:  and this will make it necessary for your Lordships to couple the consideration of the charge of the revenues, in some instances, with that of bribery.

The next day your Lordships meet (when I hope I shall not detain you so long) I mean to open the second stage of his bribery, the period of discovery:  for the first stage was the period of concealment.  When he found his bribes could no longer be concealed, he next took upon him to discover them himself, and to take merit from them.

When I shall have opened the second scene of his peculation, and his new principles of it, when you see him either treading in old corruptions, and excelling the examples he imitated, or exhibiting new ones of his own, in which of the two his conduct is the most iniquitous, and attended with most evil to the Company, I must leave your Lordships to judge.

FOOTNOTES: 

[2] Document wanting.

[3] Document wanting.

[4] Document wanting.

[5] Document wanting.

[6] Document wanting.

[7] Document wanting.

SPEECH

ON

THE SIXTH ARTICLE OF CHARGE.

THIRD DAY:  TUESDAY, MAY 5, 1789.

My Lords,—­Agreeably to your Lordships’ proclamation, which I have just heard, and the duty enjoined me by the House of Commons, I come forward to make good their charge of high crimes and misdemeanors against Warren Hastings, Esquire, late Governor-General of Bengal, and now a prisoner at your bar.

My Lords, since I had last the honor of standing in this place before your Lordships, an event has happened upon which it is difficult to speak and impossible to be silent.  My Lords, I have been disavowed by those who sent me here to represent them.  My Lords, I have been disavowed in a material part of that engagement which I had pledged myself to this House to perform.  My Lords, that disavowal has been followed by a censure.  And yet, my Lords, so censured and so disavowed, and by such an authority, I am sent here again, to this the place of my offence, under the same commission, by the same authority, to make good the same charge, against the same delinquent.