several bribes, and extorted by force, or under the power and color of his office, several sums of money from the unhappy natives of Bengal.  The next article which we shall bring before you is, that he is not only personally corrupted, but that he has personally corrupted all the other servants of the Company,—­those under him, whose corruptions he ought to have controlled, and those above him, whose business it was to control his corruptions.

We purpose to make good to your Lordships the first of these, by submitting to you, that part of those sums which are specified in the charge were taken by him with his own hand and in his own person, but that much the greater part have been taken from the natives by the instrumentality of his black agents, banians, and other dependants,—­whose confidential connection with him, and whose agency on his part in corrupt transactions, if his counsel should be bold enough to challenge us to the proof, we shall fully prove before you.  The next part, and the second branch of his corruption, namely, what is commonly called his active corruption, distinguishing the personal under the name of passive, will appear from his having given, under color of contracts, a number of corrupt and lucrative advantages from a number of unauthorized and unreasonable grants, pensions, and allowances, by which he corrupted actively the whole service of the Company.  And, lastly, we shall show, that, by establishing a universal connivance from one end of the service to the other, he has not only corrupted and contaminated it in all its parts, but bound it in a common league of iniquity to support mutually each other against the inquiry that should detect and the justice that should punish their offences.  These two charges, namely, of his active and passive corruption, we shall bring one after the other, as strongly and clearly illustrating and as powerfully confirming each other.

The first which we shall bring before you is his own passive corruption,—­so we commonly call it.  Bribes are so little known in this country that we can hardly get clear and specific technical names to distinguish them; but in future, I am afraid, the conduct of Mr. Hastings will improve our law vocabulary.  The first, then, of these offences with which Mr. Hastings stands charged here is receiving bribes himself, or through his banians.  Every one of these are overt acts of the general charge of bribery, and they are every one of them, separately taken, substantive crimes.  But whatever the criminal nature of these acts was, (and the nature was very criminal, and the consequences to the country very dreadful,) yet we mean to prove to your Lordships that they were not single acts, that they were not acts committed as opportunity offered, or as necessity tempted or urged upon the occasion, but that they are parts of a general systematic plan of corruption, for advancing his fortune at the expense of his integrity; that he has, for that purpose, not only taken the opportunity of his