Thus by his corrupt traffic of bribes with one scandalous woman he disgraced and enfeebled the native Mahomedan government, captived the person of the sovereign, and ruined and subverted the justice of the country.  What is worse, the steps taken for the murder of Nundcomar, his accuser, have confirmed and given sanction not only to the corruptions then practised by the Governor-General, but to all of which he has since been guilty.  This will furnish your Lordships with some general idea which will enable you to judge of the bribe for which he sold the country government.

Under this head you will have produced to you full proof of his sale of a judicial office to a person called Khan Jehan Khan, and the modes he took to frustrate all inquiry on that subject, upon a wicked and false pretence, that, according to his religious scruples, he could not be sworn.

The great end and object I have in view is to show the criminal tendency, the mischievous nature of these crimes, and the means taken to elude their discovery.  I am now giving your Lordships that general view which may serve to characterize Mr. Hastings’s administration in all the other parts of it.

It was not true in fact, as Mr. Hastings gives out, that there was nothing now against him, and that, when he had got rid of Nundcomar and his charge, he got rid of the whole.  No such thing.  An immense load of charges of bribery remained.  They were coming afterwards from every part of the province; and there was no office in the execution of justice which he was not accused of having sold in the most flagitious manner.

After all this thundering the sky grew calm and clear, and Mr. Hastings sat with recorded peculation, with peculation proved upon oath on the minutes of that very Council,—­he sat at the head of that Council and that board where his peculations were proved against him.  These were afterwards transmitted and recorded in the registers of his masters, as an eternal monument of his corruption, and of his high disobedience, and flagitious attempts to prevent a discovery of the various peculations of which he had been guilty, to the disgrace and ruin of the country committed to his care.

Mr. Hastings, after the execution of Nundcomar, if he had intended to make even a decent and commonly sensible use of it, would naturally have said, “This man is justly taken away who has accused me of these crimes; but as there are other witnesses, as there are other means of a further inquiry, as the man is gone of whose perjuries I might have reason to be afraid, let us now go into the inquiry.”  I think he did very ill not to go into the inquiry when the man was alive; but be it so, that he was afraid of him, and waited till he was removed, why not afterwards go into such an inquiry?  Why not go into an inquiry of all the other peculations and charges upon him, which were innumerable, one of which I have just mentioned in particular, the charge of Munny Begum, of having received from her, or her adopted son, a bribe of 40,000_l._?