When these covenants arrived in India, the servants refused at first to execute them,—­and suspended the execution of them, till they had enriched themselves with presents.  Eleven months elapsed, and it was not till Lord Clive reached the place of his destination that the covenants were executed:  and they were not executed then without some degree of force.  Soon afterwards the treaty was made with the country powers by which Sujah ul Dowlah was reestablished in the province of Oude, and paid a sum of 500,000_l._ to the Company for it.  It was a public payment, and there was not a suspicion that a single shilling of private emolument attended it.  But whether Mr. Hastings had the example of others or not, their example could not justify his briberies.  He was sent there to put an end to all those examples.  The Company did expressly vest him with that power.  They declared at that time, that the whole of their service was totally corrupted by bribes and presents, and by extravagance and luxury, which partly gave rise to them, and these, in their turn, enabled them to pursue those excesses.  They not only reposed trust in the integrity of Mr. Hastings, but reposed trust in his remarkable frugality and order in his affairs, which they considered as things that distinguished his character.  But in his defence we have him quite in another character,—­no longer the frugal, attentive servant, bred to business, bred to book-keeping, as all the Company’s servants are; he now knows nothing of his own affairs, knows not whether he is rich or poor, knows not what he has in the world.  Nay, people are brought forward to say that they know better than he does what his affairs are.  He is not like a careful man bred in a counting-house, and by the Directors put into an office of the highest trust on account of the regularity of his affairs; he is like one buried in the contemplation of the stars, and knows nothing of the things in this world.  It was, then, on account of an idea of his great integrity that the Company put him into this situation.  Since that he has thought proper to justify himself, not by clearing himself of receiving bribes, but by saying that no bad consequences resulted from it, and that, if any such evil consequences did arise from it, they arose rather from his inattention to money than from his desire of acquiring it.

I have stated to your Lordships the nature of the covenants which the East India Company sent out.  Afterwards, when they found their servants had refused to execute these covenants, they not only very severely reprehended even a moment’s delay in their execution, and threatened the exacting the most strict and rigorous performance of them, but they sent a commission to enforce the observance of them more strongly; and that commission had it specially in charge never to receive presents.  They never sent out a person to India without recognizing the grievance, and without ordering that presents should not be received, as the main