and solemn engagements into which he had entered with the Directors.  We therefore charge him, not only with his own corruptions, but with a systematic, premeditated corruption of the whole service, from the time when he was appointed, in the beginning of the year 1772, down to the year 1785, when he left it.  He never attempted to detect any one single abuse whatever; he never endeavored once to put a stop to any corruption in any man, black or white, in any way whatever.  And thus he has acted in a government of which he himself declares the nature to be such that it is almost impossible so to detect misconduct as to give legal evidence of it, though a man should be declared by the cries of the whole people to be guilty.

My Lords, he desires an arbitrary power over the Company’s servants to be given to him.  God forbid arbitrary power should be given into the hands of any man!  At the same time, God forbid, if by power be meant the ability to discover, to reach, to check, and to punish subordinate corruption, that he should not be enabled so to do, and to get at, to prosecute, and punish delinquency by law!  But honesty only, and not arbitrary power, is necessary for that purpose.  We well know, indeed, that a government requiring arbitrary power has been the situation in which this man has attempted to place us.

We know, also, my Lords, that there are cases in which the act of the delinquent may be of consequence, while the example of the criminal, from the obscurity of his situation, is of little importance:  in other cases, the act of the delinquent may be of no great importance, but the consequences of the example dreadful.  We know that crimes of great magnitude, that acts of great tyranny, can but seldom be exercised, and only by a few persons.  They are privileged crimes.  They are the dreadful prerogatives of greatness, and of the highest situations only.  But when a Governor-General descends into the muck and filth of peculation and corruption, when he receives bribes and extorts money, he does acts that are imitable by everybody.  There is not a single man, black or white, from the highest to the lowest, that is possessed in the smallest degree of momentary authority, that cannot imitate the acts of such a Governor-General.  Consider, then, what the consequences will be, when it is laid down as a principle of the service, that no man is to be called to account according to the existing laws, and that you must either give, as he says, arbitrary power, or suffer your government to be destroyed.

We asked Mr. Anderson, whether the covenant of every farmer of the revenue did not forbid him from giving any presents to any persons, or taking any.  He answered, he did not exactly remember, (for the memory of this gentleman is very indifferent, though the matter was in his own particular province,) but he thought it did; and he referred us to the record of it.  I cannot get at the record; and therefore you must take it as it stands from Mr. Anderson, without