This motion was overruled, and no final proceeding appears.

My Lords, you have heard the proceedings of the court before which Gunga Govind Sing thought proper to appeal, in consequence of the power and protection of Mr. Hastings being understood to exist after he left India, and authenticated by his last parting deed.  Your Lordships will judge by that last act of Mr. Hastings what the rest of his whole life was.

My Lords, I do not mean now to go further than just to remind your Lordships of this, that Mr. Hastings’s government was one whole system of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of destruction of the public, and of suppression of the whole system of the English government, in order to vest in the worst of the natives all the powers that could possibly exist in any government,—­in order to defeat the ends which all governments ought in common to have in view.  Thus, my Lords, I show you at one point of view what you are to expect from him in all the rest.  I have, I think, made out as clear as can be to your Lordships, so far as it was necessary to go, that his bribery and peculation was not occasional, but habitual,—­that it was not urged upon him at the moment, but was regular and systematic.  I have shown to your Lordships the operation of such a system on the revenues.

My Lords, Mr. Hastings pleads one constant merit to justify those acts,—­namely, that they produce an increase of the public revenue; and accordingly he never sells to any of those wicked agents any trusts whatever in the country, that you do not hear that it will considerably tend to the increase of the revenue.  Your Lordships will see, when he sold to wicked men the province of Bahar in the same way in which Debi Sing had this province of Dinagepore, that consequences of a horrid and atrocious nature, though not to so great an extent, followed from it.  I will just beg leave to state to your Lordships, that the kingdom of Bahar is annexed to the kingdom of Bengal; that this kingdom was governed by another Provincial Council; that he turned out that Provincial Council, and sold that government to two wicked men:  one of no fortune at all, and the other of a very suspicious fortune; one a total bankrupt, the other justly excommunicated for his wickedness in his country, and then in prison for misdemeanors in a subordinate situation of government.  Mr. Hastings destroyed the Council that imprisoned him; and, instead of putting one of the best and most reputable of the natives to govern it, he takes out of prison this excommunicated wretch, hated by God and man,—­this bankrupt, this man of evil and desperate character, this mismanager of the public revenue in an inferior station; and, as he had given Bengal to Gunga Govind Sing, he gave this province to Rajahs Kelleram and Cullian Sing.  It was done upon this principle, that they would increase and very much better the revenue.  These men seemed to be as strange instruments for improving a revenue