physicians, surgeons, and chaplains are permitted to receive the fees annexed to their profession,’ no mention whatever is made of any latitude given to the army, or any circumstances wherein it would be allowable for them to receive presents....  This unlucky discovery of an exclusion by act of Parliament, which admits of no abatement or evasion wherever its authority extends, renders a revisal of our proceedings necessary, and leaves no option to our decision.  It is not like the ordinances of the Court of Directors, where a favorable construction may be put, and some room is left for the interposition of the authority vested in ourselves,—­but positive and decisive, admitting neither of refinement nor misconstruction.  I should be happy, if in this instance a method could be devised of setting the act aside, which I should most willingly embrace; but, in my opinion, an opposition would be to incur the penalty.”

* * * * *

Your Lordships see, Mr. Hastings considered this act to be a most unlucky discovery:  indeed, as long as it remained in force, it would have been unlucky for him, because it would have destroyed one of the principal sources of his illegal profits.  Why does he consider it unlucky?  Because it admits of no reservation, no exception, no refinement whatever, but is clear, positive, decisive.  Now in what case was it that Mr. Hastings made this determination?  In the case of a donation publicly offered to an army serving in the field by a prince then independent of the Company.  If ever there was a circumstance in which any refinement, any favorable construction of the act could be used, it was in favor of a body of men serving in the field, fighting for their country, spilling their blood for it, suffering all the inconveniences of that climate.  It was undoubtedly voluntarily offered to them by the party, in the height of victory, and enriched by the plunder of whole provinces.  I believe your Lordships will agree with me, that, if any relaxation, any evasion, of an act of Parliament could be allowed, if the intention of the legislature could for a moment be trifled with, or supposed for a moment doubtful, it was in this instance; and yet, upon the rigor of the act, Mr. Hastings refuses that army the price of their blood, money won solely almost by their arms for a prince who had acquired millions by their bravery, fidelity, and sufferings.  This was the case in which Mr. Hastings refused a public donation to the army; and from that day to this they have never received it.

If the receipt of this public donation could be thus forbidden, whence has Mr. Hastings since learned that he may privately take money, and take it not only from princes, and persons in power, and abounding in wealth, but, as we shall prove, from persons in a comparative degree of penury and distress? that he could take it from persons in office and trust, whose power gave them the means of ruining the people for the purpose of enabling themselves to pay it?  Consider in what a situation the Company must be, if the Governor-General can form such a secret exchequer of direct bribes, given eo nomine as bribes, and accepted as such, by the parties concerned in the transaction, to be discovered only by himself, and with only the inward reservation that I have spoken of.