were. His services to Gunga Govind Sing were pretty conspicuous:  for, after he was turned out for peculation, Mr. Hastings restored him to his office; and when he had imprisoned fifteen persons illegally and oppressively, and when the Council were about to set them at liberty, they were set at liberty themselves, they were dismissed their offices.  Your Lordships see, then, what his public services were.  His private services are unknown:  they must be, as we conceive from their being unknown, of a suspicious nature; and I do not go further than suspicion, because I never heard, and I have not been without attempts to make the discovery, what those services were that recommended him to Mr. Hastings.

Having looked at his public services, which are well-known scenes of wickedness, barbarity, and corruption, we next come to see what his reward is.  Your Lordships hear what reward he thought proper to secure for himself; and I believe a man who has power like Gunga Govind Sing, and a disposition like Gunga Govind Sing, can hardly want the means of rewarding himself; and if every virtue rewards itself, and virtue is said to be its own reward, the virtue of Gunga Govind Sing was in a good way of seeking its own reward.  Mr. Hastings, however, thought it was not right that such a man should reward himself, but that it was necessary for the honor and justice of government to find him a reward.  Then the next thing is, what that reward shall be.  It is a grant of lands.  Your Lordships will observe, that Mr. Hastings declares some of these lands to be unoccupied, others occupied, but not by the just owners.  Now these were the very lands of the Rajah of Dinagepore from whence he had taken the bribe of 40,000_l._ My Lords, this was a monstrous thing.  Mr. Hastings had the audacity, as his parting act, when he was coming to England, and ought to have expected (whatever he did expect) the responsibility of this day,—­he was, I say, shameless enough not only to give this recommendation, but to perpetuate the mischiefs of his reign, as he has done, to his successors:  for he has really done so, by making it impossible, almost, to know anything of the true state of that country; and he has thereby made them much less responsible and criminal than before in any ill acts they may have done since his time.  But Mr. Hastings not only recommends and backs the petition of Gunga Govind Sing with his parting authority, which authority he made the people there believe would be greater in England than it was in India, but he is an evidence; he declares, that, “to his own knowledge, these lands are vacant, and confessedly, therefore, by the laws of this as well as of most other countries, in the absolute gift of government.”