exceeding the immense sum of seventeen lacs, were not the voluntary offerings of gratitude, but contributions levied on the weakness of the government, and violently exacted from the dependent state and timid disposition of the minister.  The charge, indeed, is denied on the one hand, as well as affirmed on the other.  Your honorable board must therefore determine how far the circumstance of extortion may aggravate the crime of disobedience to your positive orders, the exposing the government in a manner to sale, and receiving the infamous wages of corruption from opposite parties and contending interests.  We speak with boldness, because we speak from conviction founded upon indubitable facts, that, besides the above sums specified in the distribution account to the amount of 228,125 pounds sterling, there was likewise to the value of several lacs of rupees procured from Nundcomar and Roydullub, each of whom aspired at and obtained a promise of that very employment it was predetermined to bestow on Mahomed Reza Khan.

(Signed at the end)

“CLIVE. 
W^M B. SUMNER. 
JOHN CARNAC. 
H. VERELST.
FRA^S SYKES.”

This paper cannot be denied to be a paper of weight and authenticity, because it is signed by a gentleman now in this House, who sits on one side of the gentleman at your bar, as his bail.  This grievance, therefore, so authenticated, so great, and described in so many circumstances, I think it might be sufficient for me, in this part of the business, to show was, when Mr. Hastings was sent to India, a prevalent evil.

But, my Lords, it is necessary that I should show to you something more, because, prima fronte, this is some exculpation of Mr. Hastings:  for, if he was only a partaker in a general misconduct, it was rather vitium loci et vitium temporis than vitium hominis.  This might be said in his exculpation.  But I am next to show your Lordships the means which the Company took for removing this grievance; and that Mr. Hastings’s peculiar trust, the great specific ground of his appointment, was a confidence that he would eradicate this very evil, of which we are going to prove that he has been one of the principal promoters.  I wish your Lordships to advert to one particular circumstance,—­namely, that the two persons who were bidders at this time, and at this auction of government, for the favor and countenance of the Presidency at Calcutta, were Mahomed Reza Khan and Rajah Nundcomar.  I wish your Lordships to recollect this by-and-by, when we shall bring before you the very same two persons, who, in the same sort of transaction, and in circumstances exactly similar, or very nearly so, were candidates for the favor of Mr. Hastings.

My Lords, our next step will be to show you that the Company in 1768 had made a covenant expressly forbidding the taking of presents of above 400_l._ value in each present by the Governor-General.  I take it for granted, this will not be much litigated.  They renewed and enforced that with other covenants and other instructions; and at last came an act of Parliament, in the clearest, the most definite, the most specific words that all the wisdom of the legislature, intent upon the eradication of this evil, could use, to prevent the receiving of presents.