Your Lordships see what the opinion of the Council was of their own constitution.  You see for what it was made.  You see for what purposes the great revenue trust was taken from the Council-General, from the supreme government.  You see for what purposes the executive power was destroyed.  You have it from one of the gentlemen of this commission, at first four in number, and afterwards five, who was the most active, efficient member of it.  You see it was made for the purpose of being a tool in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; that integrity, ability, and vigilance could avail nothing; that the whole country might be laid under contribution by this man, and that he could thus practise bribery with impunity.  Thus your Lordships see the delegation of all the authority of the country, above and below, is given by Mr. Hastings to this Gunga Govind Sing.  The screen, the veil, spread before this transaction, is torn open by the very people themselves who are the tools in it.  They confess they can do nothing; they know they are instruments in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing; and Mr. Hastings uses his name and authority to make them such in the hands of the basest, the wickedest, the corruptest, the most audacious and atrocious villain ever heard of.  It is to him all the English authority is sacrificed, and four gentlemen are appointed to be his tools and instruments.  Tools and instruments for what?  They themselves state, that, if he has the inclination, he has the power and ability to lay the whole country under contribution, that he enters into the most minute secrets of every individual in it, gets into the bottom of their family affairs, and has a power totally to subvert and destroy them; and we shall show upon that head, that he well fulfilled the purposes for which he was appointed.  Did Mr. Hastings pretend to say that he destroyed the Provincial Councils for their corruptness or insufficiency, when he dissolved them?  No:  he says he has no objection to their competency, no charge to make against their conduct, but that he has destroyed them for his new arrangement.  And what is his new arrangement?  Gunga Govind Sing.  Forty English gentlemen were removed from their offices by that change.  Mr. Hastings did it, however, very economically; for all these gentlemen were instantly put upon pensions, and consequently burdened the establishment with a new charge.  Well, but the new Council was formed and constituted upon a very economical principle also.  These five gentlemen, you will have it in proof, with the necessary expenses of their office, were a charge of 62,000_l._ a year upon the establishment.  But for great, eminent, capital services, 62,000_l._, though a much larger sum than what was thought fit to be allowed for the members of the Supreme Council itself, may be admitted.  I will pass it.  It shall be granted to Mr. Hastings, that these pensions, though they created a new burden on the establishment, were all well disposed, provided the Council did their