to be crimes the acts of a meritorious servant of the public.  Mr. Hastings has pleaded a variety of merits, and every one of these merits, without the exception of one of them, have been either directly censured by the House of Commons, and censured as a ground for legislative provision, or they remain upon the records of the House of Commons, with the vouchers for them, and proofs; and though we have not actually come to the question upon every one of them, we had come, before the year 1782, to forty-five direct resolutions upon his conduct.  These resolutions were moved by a person to whom this country is under many obligations, and whom we must always mention with honor, whenever we are speaking of high situations in this country, and of great talents to support them, and of long public services in the House of Commons:  I mean Mr. Dundas, then Lord Advocate of Scotland, and now one of the principal Secretaries of State, and at the head, and worthily and deservedly at the head, of the East Indian department.  This distinguished statesman moved forty-five resolutions, the major part of them directly condemning these very acts which Mr. Hastings has pleaded as his merits, as being delinquencies and crimes.  All that the House of Commons implore of your Lordships is, that you will not take these things, which we call crimes, to be merits, without hearing the House of Commons upon the subject-matter of them.  I am sure you are too noble and too generous, as well as too just and equitable, to act in such a manner.

The first thing that Mr. Hastings brings forward in his defence is, that, whereas the Company were obliged to pay a certain tribute to the Mogul, in consideration of a grant by which the Moguls gave to us the legal title under which we hold the provinces of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, he did stop the payment of that tribute, or acknowledgment, small as it was,—­that, though bound by a treaty recognized by the Company and recognized by the nation, though bound by the very sunnud by which he held the very office he was exercising, yet he had broken the treaty, and refused to pay the stipulated acknowledgment.  Where are we, my Lords?  Is this merit?  Good God Almighty! the greatest blockhead, the most ignorant, miserable wretch, a person without either virtue or talents, has nothing to do but to order a clerk to strike a pen through such an account, and then to make a merit of it to you.  “Oh!” says he, “I have by a mere breach of your faith, by a single dash of my pen, saved you all this money which you were bound to pay.  I have exonerated you from the payment of it.  I have gained you 250,000_l._ a year forever.  Will you not reward a person who did you such a great and important service, by conniving a little at his delinquencies?”

But the House of Commons will not allow that this was a great and important service; on the contrary, they have declared the act itself to be censurable.  There is our resolution,—­Resolution the 7th:—­