duty.  But you have heard what they say themselves:  they are not there put to do any duty; they can do no duty; their abilities, their integrity, avail them nothing; they are tools in the hands of Gunga Govind Sing.  Mr. Hastings, then, has loaded the revenue with 62,000_l._ a year to make Gunga Govind Sing master of the kingdoms of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa.  What must the thing to be moved be, when the machinery, when the necessary tools, for Gunga Govind Sing have cost 62,000_l._ a year to the Company?  There it is; it is not my representation, not the representation of observant strangers, of good and decent people, that understand the nature of that service, but the opinion of the tools themselves.

Now did Mr. Hastings employ Gunga Govind Sing without a knowledge of his character?  His character was known to Mr. Hastings:  it was recorded long before, when he was turned out of another office.  “During my long residence,” says he, “in this country, this is the first time I heard of the character of Gunga Govind Sing being infamous.  No information I have received, though I have heard many people speak ill of him, ever pointed to any particular act of infamy committed by Gunga Govind Sing.  I have no intimate knowledge of Gunga Govind Sing.  What I understand of his character has been from Europeans as well as natives.”  After,—­“He had many enemies at the time he was proposed to be employed in the Company’s service, and not one advocate among the natives who had immediate access to myself.  I think, therefore, if his character had been such as has been described, the knowledge of it could hardly have failed to have been ascertained to me by the specific facts.  I have heard him loaded, as I have many others, with general reproaches, but have never heard any one express a doubt of his abilities.”  Now, if anything in the world should induce you to put the whole trust of the revenues of Bengal, both above and below, into the hands of a single man, and to delegate to him the whole jurisdiction of the country, it must be that he either was, or at least was reputed to be, a man of integrity.  Mr. Hastings does not pretend that he is reputed to be a man of integrity.  He knew that he was not able to contradict the charge brought against him, and that he had been turned out of office by his colleagues, for reasons assigned upon record, and approved by the Directors, for malversation in office.  He had, indeed, crept again into the Calcutta Committee; and they were upon the point of turning him out for malversation, when Mr. Hastings saved them the trouble by turning out the whole Committee, consisting of a president and five members.  So that in all times, in all characters, in all places, he stood as a man of a bad character and evil repute, though supposed to be a man of great abilities.

My Lords, permit me for one moment to drop my representative character here, and to speak to your Lordships only as a man of some experience in the world, and conversant with the affairs of men and with the characters of men.