list of your covenanted servants, which at this time consist of no less a number than two hundred and fifty-two,—­many of them the sons of the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, and every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and to return to pass the prime of their lives at home, as multitudes have done before them.  Neither will the revenues of this country suffice for such boundless pretensions, nor are they compatible with yours and the national interests, which may eventually suffer as certain a ruin from the effects of private competition and the claims of patronage as from the more dreaded calamities of war, or the other ordinary causes which lead to the decline of dominion.”

My Lords, you have here his declaration, that patronage, which he avows to be one of the principles of his government, and to be the principle of the last of his acts, is worse than war, pestilence, and famine,—­and that all these calamities together might not be so effectual as this patronage in wasting and destroying the country.  And at what time does he tell you this?  He tells it you when he himself had just wantonly destroyed an old regular establishment for the purpose of creating a new one, in which he says he was under the necessity of pensioning the members of the old establishment from motives of mere humanity.  He here confesses himself to be the author of the whole mischief.  “I could,” says he, “have acted better; I might have avoided desolating the country by peculation; but,” says he, “I had sons of the first families in the kingdom of Great Britain, every one aspiring to the rapid acquisition of lacs, and this would not suffer me to do my duty.”  I hope your Lordships will stigmatize the falsehood of this assertion.  Consider, my Lords, what he has said,—­two hundred and fifty men at once, and in succession, aspiring to come home in the prime of their youth with lacs.  You cannot take lacs to be less than two; we cannot make a plural less than two.  Two lacs make 20,000_l._ Then multiply that, by 252, and you will find more than 2,500,000_l._ to be provided for that set of gentlemen, and for the claims of patronage.  Undoubtedly such a patronage is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war, and all the other causes which lead to decline of dominion.

My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of corrupting the Company’s servants, beginning with systematical corruption, and ending with an avowed declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail it upon the Company, for the purpose of securing his accomplices against all the consequences of any change in the Company’s government.  “I dare not,” says he, “be honest:  if I make their fortunes, you will judge favorably of me; if I do not make their fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in any other way than by bribing the House of Peers.”  What a shameful avowal this to be made in the face of the world!  Your Lordships’ judgment upon this great cause will obliterate it from the memory of man.