do not come forward to contract with the Company, that the manufactures find their way through foreign channels, or that our investments are at once enormously dear and of a debased quality.  It is evident, then, that the evils which have been so destructive to us lie too deep for any partial plans to reach or correct; it is therefore our resolution to aim at the root of those evils, and we are happy in having reason to believe that in every just and necessary regulation we shall meet with the approbation and support of the legislature, who consider the public as materially interested in the Company’s prosperity.”

This is to show your Lordships that Mr. Hastings was armed with great powers to correct great abuses, and that there was reposed in him a special trust for that purpose.  And now I shall show, by the twenty-fifth paragraph of the same letter, that they intrusted Mr. Hastings with this very great power from some particular hope they had, not only of his abstaining himself, which is a thing taken for granted, but of his restraining abuses through every part of the service; and therefore they say, “that, in order to effectuate this great end, the first step must be to restore perfect obedience and due subordination to your administration.  Our Governor and Council must reassume and exercise their delegated powers upon every just occasion,—­punish delinquents, cherish the meritorious, discountenance that luxury and dissipation which, to the reproach of government, prevailed in Bengal.  Our President, Mr. Hastings, we trust, will set the example of temperance, economy, and application; and upon this, we are sensible, much will depend.  And here we take occasion to indulge the pleasure we have in acknowledging Mr. Hastings’s services upon the coast of Coromandel, in constructing with equal labor and ability the plan which has so much improved our investments there; and as we are persuaded he will persevere in the same laudable pursuit through every branch of our affairs in Bengal, he, in return, may depend on the steady support and favor of his employers.”  Here are not only laws to restrain abuse, here are not only salaries to prevent the temptation to it, but here are praises to animate and encourage him, here is what very few men, even bad in other respects, have resisted,—­here is a great trust put in him, to call upon him with particular vigor and exertion to prevent all abuses through the settlement, and particularly these abuses of corruption.  Much trust is put in his frugality, his order, his management of his private affairs; and from thence they hope that he would not ruin his own fortune, but improve it by honorable means, and teach the Company’s servants the same order and management, in order to free them from temptation to rapacity in their own particular situations.  There have been known to be men, otherwise corrupt and vicious, who, when great trust was put in them, have called forth principles of honor latent in their minds; and men who were nursed, in a manner, in corruption have been not only great reformers by institution, but greater reformers by the example of their own conduct.  Then I am to show, that, soon after his coming to that government, there were means given him instantly of realizing those hopes and expectations, by putting into his hands several arduous and several difficult commissions.