I understand it has been imputed as a sort of a crime in me, that I stated something of the obscurity of Mr. Hastings’s birth.  The imputation has no foundation.  Can it be believed that any man could be so absurd as to attack a man’s birth, when he is accusing his actions?  No, I have always spoken of the low, sordid, and mercenary habits in which he was bred; I said nothing of his birth.  But, my Lords, I was a good deal surprised when a friend of his and mine yesterday morning put into my hands, who had been attacking Mr. Hastings’s life and conduct, a pedigree.  I was appealing to the records of the Company; they answer by sending me to the Herald’s Office.  Many of your Lordships’ pedigrees are obscure in comparison with that of Mr. Hastings; and I only wonder how he came to derogate from such a line of nobles by becoming a contractor for bullocks.

A man may be an honest bullock-contractor, (God forbid that many of them in this country should not be very honest!) but I find his terms were nearly four times as high as those which the House of Commons had condemned as exorbitant.  They were not only unusually high, but the bullocks were badly supplied, and the contract had not been fairly advertised.  It was therefore agreed to declare the same void at the expiration of twelve months, on the 1st December, 1763.  I say again, that I do not condemn him for being a bullock-contractor; but I am suspicious of his honesty, because he has been nursed in bad and vicious habits.  That of contracting with his masters is a bad habit, as he himself has stated in a record which is printed by the House of Commons.  I condemn him for being a fraudulent bullock-contractor:  for he was turned out of that contract for fraudulent practices; it was declared void, and given to another at a lower price.  After it was so disposed of, Mr. Hastings himself, condemning his own original contract, which was at twelve rupees for a certain species of bullocks, took the contract again at seven; and on these terms it continued.  What I therefore contend for is this, that he carried with him the spirit of a fraudulent bullock-contractor through the whole of the Company’s service, in its greatest and most important parts.

My Lords, the wading through all these corruptions is an unpleasant employment for me; but what am I to think of a man who holds up his head so high, that, when a matter of account is in discussion, such as appears in this very defence that I have in my hand, he declares he does not know anything about it?  He cannot keep accounts:  that is beneath him.  We trace him throughout the whole of his career engaged in a great variety of mercantile employments; and yet, when he comes before you, you would imagine that he had been bred in the study of the sublimest sciences, and had no concern in anything else,—­that he had been engaged in writing a poem, an Iliad, or some work that might revive fallen literature.  There is but one exception to his abhorrence of accounts:  he always contrives to make up a good account for himself.