with an ill purpose, or goes out with bad dispositions.  No:  I think the young men who go there are fair and faithful representatives of the people of the same age,—­uncorrupted, but corruptible from their age, as we all are.  They are sent there young.  There is but one thing held out to them,—­“You are going to make your fortune.”  The Company’s service is to be the restoration of decayed noble families; it is to be the renovation of old, and the making of new ones.  Now, when such a set of young men are sent out with these hopes and views, and with little education, or a very imperfect one,—­when these people, from whatever rank of life selected, many from the best, most from the middling, very few from the lowest, but, high, middling, or low, they are sent out to make two things coincide which the wit of man was never able to unite, to make their fortune and form their education at once.  What is the education of the generality of the world?  Reading a parcel of books?  No.  Restraint of discipline, emulation, examples of virtues and of justice, form the education of the world.  If the Company’s servants have not that education, and are left to give loose to their natural passions, some would be corrupt of course, and some would be uncorrupt; but probably the majority of them would be inclined to pursue moderate courses between these two.  Now I am to show you that Mr. Hastings left these servants but this alternative:  “Be starved, be depressed, be ruined, disappoint the hopes of your families, or be my slaves, be ready to be subservient to me in every iniquity I shall order you to commit, and to conceal everything I shall wish you to conceal.”  This was the state of the service.  Therefore the Commons did well and wisely, when they sent us here, not to attack this or that servant who may have peculated, but to punish the man who was sent to reform abuses, and to make Bengal furnish to the world a brilliant example of British justice.

I shall now proceed to state briefly the abuses of the Company’s government,—­to show you what Mr. Hastings was expected to do for their reformation, and what he actually did do; I shall then show your Lordships the effects of the whole.

I shall begin by reading to your Lordships an extract from the Directors’ letter to Bengal, of the 10th April, 1773.

“We wish we could refute the observation, that almost every attempt made by us and our administrations at your Presidency for the reforming of abuses has rather increased them, and added to the miseries of the country we are so anxious to protect and cherish.  The truth of this observation appears fully in the late appointment of supervisors and chiefs.  Instituted as they were, to give relief to the industrious tenants, to improve and enlarge our investments, to destroy monopolies and retrench expenses, the end has by no means been answerable to the institution.  Are not the tenants more than ever oppressed and wretched?  Are our investments improved?