Your Lordships recollect that Mr. Larkins was one of the bribe-agents of Mr. Hastings,—­one, I mean, of a corporation, but not corporate in their acts.  My Lords, Mr. Larkins has told you, he has told us, and he has told the Court of Directors, that Mr. Hastings parted in a quarrel with Gunga Govind Sing, because he had not faithfully kept his engagement with regard to his bribe, and that, instead of 40,000_l._ from Dinagepore, he had only paid him 30,000_l._ My Lords, that iniquitous men will defraud one another I can conceive; but you will perceive by Mr. Hastings’s behavior at parting, that he either had in fact received this money from Gunga Govind Sing, or in some way or other had abundant reason to be satisfied,—­that he totally forgot his anger upon this occasion, and that at parting his last act was to ratify grants of lands (so described by Mr. Hastings) to Gunga Govind Sing.  Your Lordships will recollect the tender and forgiving temper of Mr. Hastings.  Whatever little bickerings there might have been between them about their small money concerns, the purifying waters of the Ganges had washed away all sins, enmities, and discontent.  By some of those arts which Gunga Govind Sing knows how to practise, (I mean conciliatory, honest arts,) he had fairly wiped away all resentment out of Mr. Hastings’s mind; and he, who so long remembered the affront offered him by Cheyt Sing, totally forgets Gunga Govind Sing’s fraud of 10,000_l._, and attempts to make others the instruments of giving him what he calls his reward.

Mr. Hastings states, among Gunga Govind’s merits, that he had, from the time of its institution, and with a very short intermission, served the office of dewan to the Calcutta Committee.  That short intermission was when he was turned out of office upon proof of peculation and embezzlement of public money; but of this cause of the intermission in the political life and political merits of Gunga Govind Sing Mr. Hastings does not tell you.

Your Lordships shall now hear what opinion a member of the Provincial Council at Calcutta, in which he had also served, had of him.

“Who is Gunga Govind Sing?” The answer is, “He was, when I left Bengal, dewan to the Committee of Revenue.—­What was his office and power during Mr. Hastings’s administration since 1780?—­He was formerly dewan to the Provincial Council stationed at Calcutta, of which I was a member.  His conduct then was licentious and unwarrantable, oppressive and extortionary.  He was stationed under us to be an humble and submissive servant, and to be of use to us in the discharge of our duty.  His conduct was everything the reverse.  We endeavored to correct the mischiefs he was guilty of as much as possible.  In one attempt to release fifteen persons illegally confined by him, we were dismissed our offices:  a different pretence was held out for our dismission, but it was only a pretence.  Since his appointment as dewan to the present Committee