There is the real President of the Committee,—­there the most active, efficient member of it.  They are both of one opinion concerning their situation:  and I think this opinion of Mr. Anderson is still more strong; for, as he thinks he should have written it with a little more guard, but should have agreed in substance, you must naturally think the strongest expression the truest representation of the circumstance.

There is another circumstance that must strike your Lordships relative to this institution.  It is where the President says that the use of the President would be to exert his best abilities, his greatest application, his constant guard,—­for what?—­to prevent his dewan from being guilty of bribery and being guilty of oppressions.  So here is an executive constitution in which the chief executive minister is to be in such a situation and of such a disposition that the chief employment of the presiding person in the Committee is to guard against him and to prevent his doing mischief.  Here is a man appointed, of the greatest possible power, of the greatest possible wickedness, in a situation to exert that power and wickedness for the destruction of the country, and without doubt it would require the greatest ability and diligence in the person at the head of that Council to prevent it.  Such a constitution, allowed and alleged by the persons themselves who composed it, was, I believe, never heard of in the world.

Now that I have done with this part of the system of bribery, your Lordships will permit me to follow Mr. Hastings to his last parting scene.  He parted with his power, he parted with his situation, he parted with everything, but he never could part with Gunga Govind Sing.  He was on his voyage, he had embarked, he was upon the Ganges, he had quitted his government; and his last dying sigh, his last parting voice, was “Gunga Govind Sing!” It ran upon the banks of the Ganges, as another plaintive voice ran upon the banks of another river (I forget whose); his last accents were, “Gunga, Gunga Govind Sing!” It demonstrates the power of friendship.

It is said by some idle, absurd moralists, that friendship is a thing that cannot subsist between bad men; but I will show your Lordships the direct contrary; and, after having shown you what Gunga Govind Sing was, I shall bring before you Mr. Hastings’s last act of friendship for him.  Not that I have quite shown you everything, but pretty well, I think, respecting this man.  There is a great deal concerning his character and conduct that is laid by, and I do believe, that, whatever time I should take up in expatiating upon these things, there would be “in the lowest deep still a lower deep”; for there is not a day of the inquiry that does not bring to light more and more of this evil against Mr. Hastings.