“That the conduct of the Company and their servants in India to the King,” (meaning the Mogul king) “and Nudjif Khan, with respect to the tribute payable to the one, and the stipend to the other, and with respect to the transfer of the provinces of Corah, and Allahabad to the Vizier, was contrary to policy and good faith; and that such wise and practicable measures should be adopted in future as may tend to redeem the national honor, and recover the confidence and attachment of the princes of India.”

This act of injustice, against which we have fulminated the thunder of our resolutions as a heavy crime, as a crime that dishonored the nation, and which measures ought to be taken to redress, this man has the insolence to bring before your Lordships as a set-off against the crimes we charge him with.  This outrageous defiance of the House of Commons, this outrageous defiance of all the laws of his country, I hope your Lordships will not countenance.  You will not let it pass for nothing:  on the contrary, you will consider it as aggravating heavily his crimes.  And, above all, you will not suffer him to set off this, which we have declared to be injurious to our national honor and credit, and which he himself does not deny to be a breach of the public faith, against other breaches of the public faith with which we charge him,—­or to justify one class of public crimes by proving that he has committed others.

Your Lordships see that he justifies this crime upon the plea of its being profitable to the Company; but he shall not march off even on this ground with flying colors.  My Lords, pray observe in what manner he calculates these profits.  Your Lordships will find that he makes up the account of them much in the same manner as he made up the account of Nobkissin’s money.  There is, indeed, no account which he has ever brought forth that does not carry upon it not only ill faith and national dishonor, but direct proofs of corruption.  When Mr. Hastings values himself upon this shocking and outrageous breach of faith, which required nothing but a base and illiberal mind, without either talents, courage, or skill, except that courage which defies all consequences, which defies shame, which defies the judgment and opinion of his country and of mankind, no other talents than may be displayed by the dash of a pen, you will at least expect to see a clear and distinct account of what was gained by it.

In the year 1775, at a period when Mr. Hastings was under an eclipse, when honor and virtue, in the character of General Clavering, Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, sat for a short period at the Council-Board,—­during that time, Mr. Hastings’s conduct upon this occasion was called into question.  They called for an account of the revenues of the country,—­what was received, and what had been paid; and in the account returned they found the amount of the tribute due to the Mogul, 250,000_l._, entered as paid up to October,