It is necessary to inform your Lordships that the revenues of Bengal are, for the most part, territorial revenues, great quit-rents issuing out of lands.  I shall say nothing either of the nature of this property, of the rights of the people to it, or of the mode of exacting the rents, till that great question of revenues, one of the greatest which we shall have to lay before you, shall be brought before your Lordships particularly and specially as an article of charge.  I only mention it now as an exemplification of the great principle of corruption which guided Mr. Hastings’s conduct.

When the ancient nobility, the great princes, (for such I may call them,) a nobility, perhaps, as ancient as that of your Lordships, (and a more truly noble body never existed in that character,)—­my Lords, when all the nobility, some of whom have borne the rank and port of princes, all the gentry, all the freeholders of the country, had their estates in that manner confiscated,—­that is, either given to themselves to hold on the footing of farmers, or totally confiscated,—­when such an act of tyranny was done, no doubt some good was pretended.  This confiscation was made by Mr. Hastings, and the lands let to these farmers for five years, upon an idea which always accompanies his acts of oppression, the idea of moneyed merit.  He adopted this mode of confiscating the estates, and letting them to farmers, for the avowed purpose of seeing how much it was possible to take out of them.  Accordingly, he set them up to this wild and wicked auction, as it would have been, if it had been a real one,—­corrupt and treacherous, as it was,—­he set these lands up for the purpose of making that discovery, and pretended that the discovery would yield a most amazing increase of rent.  And for some time it appeared so to do, till it came to the touchstone of experience; and then it was found that there was a defalcation from these monstrous raised revenues which were to cancel in the minds of the Directors the wickedness of so atrocious, flagitious, and horrid an act of treachery.  At the end of five years what do you think was the failure?  No less than 2,050,000_l._ Then a new source of corruption was opened,—­that is, how to deal with the balances:  for every man who had engaged in these transactions was a debtor to government, and the remission of that debt depended upon the discretion of the Governor-General.  Then the persons who were to settle the composition of that immense debt, who were to see how much was recoverable and how much not, were able to favor, or to exact to the last shilling; and there never existed a doubt but that not only upon the original cruel exaction, but upon the remission afterwards, immense gains were derived.  This will account for the manner in which those stupendous fortunes which astonish the world have been made.  They have been made, first by a tyrannous exaction from the people who were suffered to remain in possession of their own land as farmers,—­then