arrayed, disciplined, and paid.  This language which I used was not, as fools have thought proper to call it, offensive and abusive; it is in a proper criminatory tone, justified by the facts that I have stated to you, and in every step we take it is justified more and more.  I take it as a text upon which I mean to preach; I take it as a text which I wish to have in your Lordships’ memory from the beginning to the end of this proceeding.  He is not only guilty of iniquity himself, but is at the head of a system of iniquity and rebellion, and will not suffer with impunity any one honest man to exist in India, if he can help it.  Every mark of obedience to the legal authority of the Company is by him condemned; and if there is any virtue remaining in India, as I think there is, it is not his fault that it still exists there.

We have shown you the servile obedience of the natives of the country; we have shown you the miserable situation to which a great prince, at least a person who was the other day a great prince, was reduced by Mr. Hastings’s system.  We shall next show you that this prince, who, unfortunately for himself, became a dependant on the Company, and thereby subjected to the will of an arbitrary government, is made by him the instrument of his own degradation, the instrument of his (the Governor’s) falsehoods, the instrument of his peculations; and that he had been subjected to all this degradation for the purposes of the most odious tyranny, violence, and corruption.

Mr. Hastings, having assumed the government to himself, soon made Oude a private domain.  It had, to be sure, a public name, but it was to all practical intents and purposes his park, or his warren,—­a place, as it were, for game, whence he drew out or killed, at an earlier or later season, as he thought fit, anything he liked, and brought it to his table according as it served his purpose.  Before I proceed, it will not be improper for me to remind your Lordships of the legitimate ends to which all controlling and superintending power ought to be directed.  Whether a man acquires this power by law or by usurpation, there are certain duties attached to his station.  Let us now see what these duties are.

The first is, to take care of that vital principle of every state, its revenue.  The next is, to preserve the magistracy and legal authorities in honor, respect, and force.  And the third, to preserve the property, movable and immovable, of all the people committed to his charge.

In regard to his first duty, the protection of the revenue, your Lordships will find, that, from three millions and upwards which I stated to be the revenue of Oude, and which Mr. Hastings, I believe, or anybody for him, has never thought proper to deny, it sunk under his management to about one million four hundred and forty thousand pounds:  and even this, Mr. Middleton says, (as you may see in your minutes,) was not completely realized.  Thus, my Lords, you see that one half of the whole revenue of the country was lost after it came into Mr. Hastings’s management.  Well, but it may perhaps be said this was owing to the Nabob’s own imprudence.  No such thing, my Lords; it could not be so; for the whole real administration and government of the country was in the hands of Mr. Hastings’s agents, public or private.