and passed our days in peace.”  The shame of England and of the English government is here put upon your Lordships’ records.  Here you have, just following that afflicting report of Mr. Duncan’s, and that account of Mr. Hastings himself, in which he said the inhabitants fled before his face, the addresses of these miserable people.  He dares to impose upon your eyesight, upon your common sense, upon the plain faculties of mankind.  He dares, in contradiction to all his own assertions, to make these people come forward and swear that they have enjoyed nothing but complete satisfaction and pleasure during the whole time of his government.

My Lords, I have done with this business, for I have now reached the climax of degradation and suffering, after moving step by step through the several stages of tyranny and oppression.  I have done with it, and have only to ask, In what country do we live, where such a scene can by any possibility be offered to the public eye?

Let us here, my Lords, make a pause.—­You have seen what Benares was under its native government.  You have seen the condition in which it was left by Cheyt Sing, and you have seen the state in which Mr. Hastings left it.  The rankling wounds which he has inflicted upon the country, and the degradation to which the inhabitants have been subjected, have been shown to your Lordships.  You have now to consider whether or not you will fortify with your sanction any of the detestable principles upon which the prisoner justifies his enormities.

My Lords, we shall next come to another dependent province, when I shall illustrate to your Lordships still further the effects of Mr. Hastings’s principles.  I allude to the province of Oude,—­a country which, before our acquaintance with it, was in the same happy and flourishing condition with Benares, and which dates its period of decline and misery from the time of our intermeddling with it.  The Nabob of Oude was reduced, as Cheyt Sing was, to be a dependant on the Company, and to be a greater dependant than Cheyt Sing, because it was reserved in Cheyt Sing’s agreement that we should not interfere in his government.  We interfered in every part of the Nabob’s government; we reduced his authority to nothing; we introduced a perfect scene of anarchy and confusion into the country, where there was no authority but to rob and destroy.

I have not strength at present to proceed; but I hope I shall soon be enabled to do so.  Your Lordships cannot, I am sure, calculate from your own youth and strength; for I have done the best I can, and find myself incapable just at this moment of going any further.

SPEECH

IN

GENERAL REPLY.

FOURTH DAY:  THURSDAY, JUNE 5, 1794.