testimony to the uprightness and fidelity of this meritorious servant of the Company.  It runs thus:  “Conceiving it to be the intention of the legislature that the Governor-General and members of the Council should receive no presents, either from the Indian powers or any persons whatever, he [General Clavering] has strictly complied, since his arrival here, both with the spirit and the letter of the act of Parliament, and has accordingly returned all the presents which have been made to him.”  I have dwelt thus long upon this subject, not merely upon account of its own corrupt character, which has been sufficiently stigmatized by my honorable colleague, but upon account of the principle that is laid down by the prisoner, in his defence of his conduct,—­a principle directly leading to a continuance of the same iniquitous practice, and subversive of every attempt to check or control it.

I must beg leave to recall your Lordships’ attention to another, but similar instance of his peculation, another and new mode of taking presents:  I mean, the present which Mr. Hastings took, through Gunga Govind Sing, from those farmers of the revenues amongst whom he had distributed the pillage of the whole country.  This scandalous breach of his covenant he attempts to justify by the inward intention of his own mind to apply the money so taken to the public service.  Upon this, my Lords, I shall only observe, that this plea of an inward intention in his own mind may, if admitted, justify any evil act whatever of this kind.  You have seen how presents from the Nabob are justified; you have seen how the taking a sum of money or allowance for entertainment, directly contrary to the covenant, how that is attempted to be justified; you see in what manner he justifies this last-mentioned act of peculation; and your Lordships will now have to decide upon the validity of these pleas.

There still remains, unobserved upon, an instance of his malversation, wholly new in its kind, to which I will venture to desire your Lordships very seriously to turn your attention.  In all the causes of peculation or malversation in office that ever have been tried before this high court, or before any lower court of judicature, in all the judicial records of modern crimes, or of antiquity, you will not find anything in any degree like it.  We have all, in our early education, read the Verrine Orations.  We read them not merely to instruct us, as they will do, in the principles of eloquence, and to acquaint us with the manners, customs, and laws of the ancient Romans, of which they are an abundant repository, but we may read them from a much higher motive.  We may read them from a motive which the great author had doubtless in his view, when by publishing them he left to the world and to the latest posterity a monument by which it might be seen what course a great public accuser in a great public cause ought to pursue, and, as connected with it, what course judges ought to pursue in deciding