and therefore to attempt to justify acts done under one form of appointment by acts done under another form is to the last degree wild and absurd.  Lord Cornwallis was going to conduct a war of great magnitude, and was consequently trusted with extraordinary powers.  He went in the two characters of governor and commander-in-chief; and yet the legislature was sensible of the doubtful validity of a Governor-General’s carrying with him the whole powers of the Council.  But Mr. Hastings was not commander-in-chief, when he assumed the whole military as well as civil power.  Lord Cornwallis, as I have just said, was not only commander-in-chief, but was going to a great war, where he might have occasion to treat with the country powers in a civil capacity; and yet so doubtful was the legislature upon this point, that they passed a special act to confirm that delegation, and to give him a power of acting under it.

My Lords, we do further contend that Mr. Hastings had no right to assume the character of commander-in-chief; for he was no military man, nor was he appointed by the Company to that trust.  His assumption of the military authority was a gross usurpation.  It was an authority to which he would have had no right, if the whole powers of government were vested in him, and he had carried his Council with him on his horse.  If, I say, Mr. Hastings had his Council on his crupper, he could neither have given those powers to himself nor made a partition of them with Mr. Wheler.  Could Lord Cornwallis, for instance, who carried with him the power of commander-in-chief, and authority to conclude treaties with all the native powers, could he, I ask, have left a Council behind him in Calcutta with equal powers, who might have concluded treaties in direct contradiction to those in which he was engaged?  Clearly he could not; therefore I contend that this partition of power, which supposes an integral authority in each counsellor, is a monster that cannot exist.  This the parties themselves felt so strongly that they were obliged to have recourse to a stratagem scarcely less absurd than their divided assumption of power.  They entered into a compact to confirm each other’s acts, and to support each other in whatever they did:  thus attempting to give their separate acts a legal form.

I have further to remark to your Lordships, what has just been suggested to me, that it was for the express purpose of legalizing Lord Cornwallis’s delegation that he was made commander-in-chief as well as Governor-General by the act.

The next plea urged by Mr. Hastings is conveniency.  “It was convenient,” he says, “for me to do this.”  I answer, No person acting with delegated power can delegate that power to another. Delegatus non potest delegare is a maxim of law.  Much less has he a right to supersede the law, and the principle of his own delegation and appointment, upon any idea of convenience.  But what was the conveniency?  There was no one professed object