But, say his counsel, Mr. Hastings thought that the value of the lands was thoroughly known; they had been investigated three times over, and they were all let by public auction to the highest bidder.—­This may or may not be a true test of their value; but it is a test which, as it led to the almost entire confiscation of the landed interest of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, three great kingdoms, by a dash of that man’s pen, into the hands of his banians and creatures, I can never think of it, or of its author, without horror.

Some people say, you ought to hate the crime and love the criminal.  No, that is the language of false morality; you ought to hate the crime and the criminal, if the crime is of magnitude.  If the crime is a small one, then you ought to be angry with the crime and reluctant to punish the criminal; but when there are great crimes, then you may hate them together.  What! am I to love Nero? to fall in love with Heliogabalus? is Domitian to be the subject of my affection?  No, we hate the crime, and we hate the criminal ten times more; and if I use indignant language, if I use the language of scorn and horror with respect to the criminal, I use the language that becomes me.

But, says one of the counsel, the Company might possess a knowledge of the country in general, but they could not know every bega, of it, (about the third part of an acre of land,) without such a commission.  That is to say, you could not squeeze everything out of the people, without ordering such a villain as Gunga Govind Sing, (I call things, by their names,) that most atrocious and wicked instrument of the most atrocious and wicked tyranny, to examine every man’s papers, to oblige every man to produce his titles and accounts upon pain of criminal punishment, to be inflicted at the discretion of this commissioner, this Gunga Govind Sing.  For an account of these acts, and for a description of an aumeeny, I refer your Lordships to the evidence in your Minutes, from page 1287 to 1301; and I pass on, expressing only my horror and detestation at it, and wishing to kindle in your Lordships’ minds the same horror and detestation of it.

Thus you see that Mr. Hastings was not satisfied with confiscation only.  He comes just afterwards with a blister upon the sore.  He lets loose another set of ravagers and inquisitors upon them, under Gunga Govind Sing, and these poor people are ravaged by the whole tribe of Calcutta banians.

Mr. Hastings has himself defined an aumeen in page 1022, where he states that Nundcomar desired him to make his son an aumeen.  “The promise which he [Nundcomar] says I made him, that he should be constituted aumeen, that is, inquisitor-general over the whole country, and that I would delegate to him my whole power and influence, is something more than a negative falsehood.”  He justly and naturally reprobates the proposition of appointing an inquisitor-general over the whole country; and yet we see him afterwards appointing Gunga Govind Sing such an inquisitor-general over the whole country, in order that a bega of land should not escape him.