My Lords, I will venture to say, there is no man but owes something to his character.  It is the grace, undoubtedly, of a virtuous, firm mind often to despise common, vulgar calumny; but if ever there is an occasion in which it does become such a mind to disprove it, it is the case of being charged in high office with pecuniary malversation, pecuniary corruption.  There is no case in which it becomes an honest man, much less a great man, to leave upon record specific charges against him of corruption in his government, without taking any one step whatever to refute them.

Though Mr. Hastings took no step to refute the charges, he took many steps to punish the authors of them; and those miserable people who had the folly to make complaints against Mr. Hastings, to make them under the authority of an act of Parliament, under every sanction of public faith, yet, in consequence of those charges, every person concerned in them has been, as your Lordships will see, since his restoration to power, absolutely undone, brought from the highest situation to the lowest misery, so that they may have good reason to repent they ever trusted an English Council, that they ever trusted a Court of Directors, that they ever trusted an English act of Parliament, that they ever dared to make their complaints.

And here I charge upon Mr. Hastings, that, by never taking a single step to defeat or detect the falsehood of any of those charges against him, and by punishing the authors of them, he has been guilty of such a subversion of all the principles of British government as will deserve, and will I dare say meet, your Lordships’ most severe animadversion.

In the course of this inquiry we find a sort of pause in his peculations, a sort of gap in the history, as if pages were torn out.  No longer we meet with the same activity in taking money that was before found; not even a trace of complimentary presents is to be found in the records during the time whilst General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis formed the majority of the Council.  There seems to have been a kind of truce with that sort of conduct for a while, and Mr. Hastings rested upon his arms.  However, the very moment Mr. Hastings returned to power, peculation began again just at the same instant; the moment we find him free from the compulsion and terror of a majority of persons otherwise disposed than himself, we find him at his peculation again.

My Lords, at this time very serious inquiries had begun in the House of Commons concerning peculation.  They did not go directly to Bengal, but they began upon the coast of Coromandel, and with the principal governors there.  There was, however, an universal opinion (and justly founded) that these inquiries would go to far greater lengths.  Mr. Hastings was resolved, then, to change the whole course and order of his proceeding.  Nothing could persuade him, upon any account, to lay aside his system of bribery:  that he was resolved to persevere in.