of your interest, to endless researches, which can produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at home.”

My Lords, you see here, that, after admitting that he has promised to the Court of Directors to do what they ordered him to do, (and he had promised to make a radical reform in their whole service, and to cure those abuses which they have stated,) he declares that he will not execute them; he pleads a variety of other occupations; but as to that great fundamental grievance he was appointed to eradicate, he declares he will not even attempt it.  “Why did you promise?”—­it naturally occurs to ask him that question.  “Why,” says he, “you will readily perceive that I must have been sincere in those declarations; since it would have argued great indiscretion to have made them, had I known my inability to perform them.”  This is a kind of argument that belongs to Mr. Hastings exclusively.  Most other people would say, “You may judge of the sincerity of my promises by my zeal in the performance”; but he says, “You may judge of the sincerity of my promises, because I would not promise, if I had not thought I should be able to perform.”  It runs in this ridiculous circle:  “I promised to obey the Court of Directors; therefore I knew that I could obey them:  but I could not obey them; therefore I was absolved from my promise, and did not attempt to obey them.”  In fact, there is not so much as one grievance or abuse in the country, that he reformed.  And this was systematical in Mr. Hastings’s conduct,—­that he was resolved to connive at the whole of the iniquities of the service, because he was resolved that every one of those existing iniquities should be practised by himself.  “But,” says he, “the reformation required can produce no real good, and may expose your affairs to all the ruinous consequences of personal malevolence, both here and at home.”  This he gives you as a reason why he will not prosecute the inquiry into abuses abroad,—­because he is afraid that you should punish him at home for doing his duty abroad,—­that it will expose him to malevolence at home; and therefore, to avoid being subject to malevolence at home, he would not do his duty abroad.

He follows this with something that is perfectly extraordinary:  he desires, instead of doing his duty, which he declares it is impossible to do, that he may be invested with an arbitrary power.  I refer your Lordships to pages 2827, 2828, and 2829 of the printed Minutes, where you will find the system of his government to be formed upon a resolution not to use any one legal means of punishing corruption, or for the prevention of corruption; all that he desires is, to have an absolute arbitrary power over the servants of the Company.  There you will see that arbitrary power for corrupt purposes over the servants of the Company is the foundation of every part of his whole conduct.  Remark what he says here, and then judge whether these inferences are to be eluded by any chicane.