To let you see how provident Mr. Hastings’s management of it was, I shall produce to your Lordships one of the principal manoeuvres that he adopted for the improvement of the revenue, and for the happiness and prosperity of the country, the latter of which will always go along, more or less, with the first.

The Nabob, whose acts your Lordships have now learned to appreciate as no other than the acts of Mr. Hastings, writes to the Council to have a body of British officers, for the purposes of improving the discipline of his troops, collecting his revenues, and repressing disorder and outrage among his subjects.  This proposal was ostensibly fair and proper; and if I had been in the Council at that time, and the Nabob had really and bona fide made such a request, I should have said he had taken a very reasonable and judicious step, and that the Company ought to aid him in his design.

Among the officers sent to Oude, in consequence of this requisition, was the well-known Colonel Hannay:  a man whose name will be bitterly and long remembered in India.  This person, we understand, had been recommended to Mr. Hastings by Sir Elijah Impey:  and his appointment was the natural consequence of such patronage.  I say the natural consequence, because Sir Elijah Impey appears on your minutes to have been Mr. Hastings’s private agent and negotiator in Oude.  In that light, and in that light only, I consider Colonel Hannay in this business.  We cannot prove that he was not of Mr. Hastings’s own nomination originally and primarily; but whether we take him in this way, or as recommended by Sir Elijah Impey, or anybody else, Mr. Hastings is equally responsible.

Colonel Hannay is sent up by Mr. Hastings, and has the command of a brigade, of two regiments I think, given to him.  Thus far all is apparently fair and easily understood.  But in this country we find everything in masquerade and disguise.  We find this man, instead of being an officer, farmed the revenue of the country, as is proved by Colonel Lumsden and other gentlemen, who were his sub-farmers and his assistants.  Here, my Lords, we have a man who appeared to have been sent up the country as a commander of troops, agreeably to the Nabob’s request, and who, upon our inquiry, we discover to have been farmer-general of the country!  We discover this with surprise; and I believe, till our inquiries began, it was unknown in Europe.  We have, however, proved upon your Lordships’ minutes, by an evidence produced by Mr. Hastings himself, that Colonel Hannay was actually farmer-general of the countries of Baraitch and Goruckpore.  We have proved upon your minutes that Colonel Hannay was the only person possessed of power in the country; that there was no magistrate in it, nor any administration of the law whatever.  We have proved to your Lordships that in his character of farmer-general he availed himself of the influence derived from commanding a battalion of soldiers.