fundamental part of their duty, and upon which all the rest depended, as it certainly must:  for persons at the head of government should not encourage that by example which they ought by precept, authority, and force to restrain in all below them.  That commission failing, another commission was preparing to be sent out with the same instructions, when an act of Parliament took it up; and that act, which gave Mr. Hastings power, did mould in the very first stamina of his power this principle, in words the most clear and forcible that an act of Parliament could possibly devise upon the subject.  And that act was made not only upon a general knowledge of the grievance, but your Lordships will see in the reports of that time that Parliament had directly in view before them the whole of that monstrous head of corruption under the name of presents, and all the monstrous consequences that followed it.

Now, my Lords, every office of trust, in its very nature, forbids the receipt of bribes.  But Mr. Hastings was forbidden it, first, by his official situation,—­next, by covenant,—­and lastly, by act of Parliament:  that is to say, by all the things that bind mankind, or that can bind them,—­first, moral obligation inherent in the duty of their office,—­next, the positive injunctions of the legislature of the country,—­and lastly, a man’s own private, particular, voluntary act and covenant.  These three, the great and only obligations that bind mankind, all united in the focus of this single point,—­that they should take no presents.

I am to mark to your Lordships, that this law and this covenant did consider indirect ways of taking presents—­taking them by others, and such like—­directly in the very same light as they considered taking them by themselves.  It is perhaps a much more dangerous way; because it adds to the crime a false, prevaricating mode of concealing it, and makes it much more mischievous by admitting others into the participation of it.  Mr. Hastings has said, (and it is one of the general complaints of Mr. Hastings,) that he is made answerable for the acts of other men.  It is a thing inherent in the nature of his situation.  All those who enjoy a great superintending trust, which is to regulate the whole affairs of an empire, are responsible for the acts and conduct of other men, so far as they had anything to do with appointing them, or holding them in their places, or having any sort of inspection into their conduct.  But when a Governor presumes to remove from their situations those persons whom the public authority and sanction of the Company have appointed, and obtrudes upon them by violence other persons, superseding the orders of his masters, he becomes doubly responsible for their conduct.  If the persons he names should be of notorious evil character and evil principles, and if this should be perfectly known to himself, and of public notoriety to the rest of the world, then another strong responsibility attaches on him for the acts of those persons.