lip-honors:  but we think we derive from those panegyrics, which Mr. Hastings has had sent over as evidence to supply the total want of it, an indication of the impossibility of attaining it.  Mr. Hastings has brought them here, and I must say we are under some difficulty about them, and the difficulty is this.  We think we can produce before your Lordships proofs of barbarity and peculation by Mr. Hastings; we have the proofs of them in specific provinces, where those proofs may be met by contrary proofs, or may lose their weight from a variety of circumstances.  We thought we had got the matter sure, that everything was settled, that he could not escape us, after he had himself confessed the bribes he had taken from the specific provinces.  But in what condition are we now?  We have from those specific provinces the strongest attestations that there is not any credit to be paid to his own acknowledgments.  In short, we have the complaints, concerning these crimes of Mr. Hastings, of the injured persons themselves; we have his own confessions; we shall produce both to your Lordships.  But these persons now declare, that not only their own complaints are totally unfounded, but that Mr. Hastings’s confessions are not true, and not to be credited.  These are circumstances which your Lordships will consider in the view you take of this wonderful body of attestation.

It is a pleasant thing to see in these addresses the different character and modes of eloquence of different countries.  In those that will be brought before your Lordships you will see the beauty of chaste European panegyric improved by degrees into high, Oriental, exaggerated, and inflated metaphor.  You will see how the language is first written in English, then translated into Persian, and then retranslated into English.  There may be something amusing to your Lordships in this, and the beauty of these styles may, in this heavy investigation, tend to give a little gayety and pleasure.  We shall bring before you the European and Asiatic incense.  You will have the perfume-shops of the two countries.

One of the accusations which we mean to bring against Mr. Hastings is upon the part of the Zemindar Radanaut, of the country of Dinagepore.  Now hear what the Zemindar says himself.  “As it has been learned by me, the mutsuddies, and the respectable officers of my zemindary, that the ministers of England are displeased with the late Governor, Warren Hastings, Esquire, upon the suspicion that he oppressed us, took money from us by deceit and force, and ruined the country, therefore we, upon the strength of our religion, which we think it incumbent on and necessary for us to abide by, following the rules laid down in giving evidence, declare the particulars of the acts and deeds of Warren Hastings, Esquire, full of circumspection and caution, civility and justice, superior to the conduct of the most learned, and, by representing what is fact, wipe away the doubts that have possessed