My Lords, as I said, Mr. Hastings becomes a witness, and I believe in the course of the proceedings you will find a false witness, for Gunga Govind Sing.  “To my own knowledge,” says he, “they are vacant.”  Why, I cannot find that Mr. Hastings had ever been in Dinagepore; or if he had, it must have been only as a passenger.  He had not the supervision of the district, in any other sense than with that kind of eagle eye which he must have had over all Bengal, and which he had for no other purposes than those for which eagles’ eyes are commonly used.  He becomes, you see, a witness for Gunga Govind Sing, and orders to be given him, as a recompense for all the iniquitous acts this man committed, the lands of that very Rajah who through the hands of Gunga Govind Sing had given an enormous bribe to Mr. Hastings.  These lands were not without an ownership, but were lands in the hands of the Rajah, and were to be severed from the zemindary, and given to Gunga Govind Sing.  The manner of obtaining them is something so shocking, and contains such a number of enormities completed in one act, that one can scarce imagine how such a compound could exist.

This man, besides his office of dewan to the Calcutta Committee, which gave him the whole management and power of the revenue, was, as I have stated, at the head of all the registers in the kingdom, whose duty it was to be a control upon him as dewan.  As Mr. Hastings destroyed every other constitutional settlement of the country, so the office which was to be a check upon Gunga Govind Sing, namely, the register of the country, had been superseded, and revived in another shape, and given to the own son of this very man.  God forbid that a son should not be under a certain and reasonable subordination!  But though in this country we know a son may possibly be free from the control of his father, yet the meanest slave is not in a more abject condition of slavery than a son is in that country to his father; for it extends to the power of a Roman parent.  The office of register is to take care that a full and fair rent is secured to government; and above all, it is his business to take care of the body of laws, the Rawaj-ul-Mulk, or custom of the country, of which he is the guardian as the head of the law.  It was his business to secure that fundamental law of the government, and fundamental law of the country, that a zemindary cannot be split, or any portion of it separated, without the consent of the government.  This man betrayed his trust, and did privately, contrary to the duty of his office, get this minor Rajah, who was but an infant, who was but nine years old at the time, to make over to him a part of his zemindary, to a large amount, under color of a fraudulent and fictitious sale.  By the laws of that country, by the common laws of Nature, the act of this child was void.  The act was void as against the government, by giving a zemindary without the consent of the government to the very man who ought to have prevented such an