There are crimes, undoubtedly, of great magnitude, naturally fitted to create horror, and that loudly call for punishment, that have yet no idea of turpitude annexed to them; but unclean hands, bribery, venality, and peculation are offences of turpitude, such as, in a governor, at once debase the person and degrade the government itself, making it not only horrible, but vile and contemptible in the eyes of all mankind.  In this humiliation and abjectness of guilt, he comes here not as a criminal on his defence, but as a vast fertile genius who has made astonishing discoveries in the art of government,—­“Dicam insigne, recens, alio indictum ore”—­who, by his flaming zeal and the prolific ardor and energy of his mind, has boldly dashed out of the common path, and served his country by new and untrodden ways; and now he generously communicates, for the benefit of all future governors and all future governments, the grand arcanum of his long and toilsome researches.  He is the first, but, if we do not take good care, he will not be the last, that has established the corruption of the supreme magistrate among the settled resources of the state; and he leaves this principle as a bountiful donation, as the richest deposit that ever was made in the treasury of Bengal.  He claims glory and renown from that by which every other person since the beginning of time has been dishonored and disgraced.  It has been said of an ambassador, that he is a person employed to tell lies for the advantage of the court that sends him.  His is patriotic bribery, and public-spirited corruption.  He is a peculator for the good of his country.  It has been said that private vices are public benefits.  He goes the full length of that position, and turns his private peculation into a public good.  This is what you are to thank him for.  You are to consider him as a great inventor upon this occasion.  Mr. Hastings improves on this principle.  He is a robber in gross, and a thief in detail,—­he steals, he filches, he plunders, he oppresses, he extorts,—­all for the good of the dear East India Company,—­all for the advantage of his honored masters, the Proprietors,—­all in gratitude to the dear perfidious Court of Directors, who have been in a practice to heap “insults on his person, slanders on his character, and indignities on his station,—­who never had the confidence in him that they had in the meanest of his predecessors.”

If you sanction this practice, if, after all you have exacted from the people by your taxes and public imposts, you are to let loose your servants upon them, to extort by bribery and peculation what they can from them, for the purpose of applying it to the public service only whenever they please, this shocking consequence will follow from it.  If your Governor is discovered in taking a bribe, he will say, “What is that to you? mind your business; I intend it for the public service.”  The man who dares to accuse him loses the favor of the Governor-General and the India Company.  They will say, “The Governor has been doing a meritorious action, extorting bribes for our benefit, and you have the impudence to think of prosecuting him.”  So that the moment the bribe is detected, it is instantly turned into a merit:  and we shall prove that this is the case with Mr. Hastings, whenever a bribe has been discovered.