My honorable fellow Manager who preceded me in this business did, in his remarks upon the inference drawn by the prisoner’s counsel from the seizure of the Begums’ treasures by the Nabob, as evidence of their guilt, as he ought to do,—­he treated it with proper contempt.  I consider it, indeed, to be as little an evidence of their guilt as he does, and as little a defence of that seizure as he does.  But I consider it in another and in a new light, namely, as a heavy aggravation of the prisoner’s crimes, and as a matter that will let you into the whole spirit of his government; and I warn your Lordships against being imposed on by evasions, of which if it were possible for you to be the dupes, you would be unfit to be judges of the smallest matters in the world, civil or criminal.

The first observation which I shall beg leave to make to your Lordships is this, that the whole of the proceedings, from beginning to end, has been a mystery of iniquity, and that in no part of them have the orders of the Company been regarded, but, on the contrary, the whole has been carried on in a secret and clandestine manner.

It is necessary that your Lordships should be acquainted with the manner in which the correspondence of the Company’s servants ought to be carried on and their proceedings regulated; your Lordships, therefore, will please to hear read the orders given concerning correspondence of every kind with the country powers.  You will remember the period when these orders were issued, namely, the period at which the act passed for the better direction of the servants of the Company.  By this act Mr. Hastings was appointed to be Governor-General, and the Court of Directors was required by that act to prepare orders and instructions, which Mr. Hastings was required by the same act to comply with.  You will see what these instructions and orders were, and in what manner he has complied with them.

     Extract of General Instructions to the Governor-General and
     Council, 29th of March, 1774.

“We direct that you assemble in Council twice every week, and that all the members be duly summoned; that the correspondence with the princes or country powers in India be carried on by the Governor-General only, but that all letters sent by him be first approved in Council, and that he lay before the Council, at their next meeting, all letters received by him in the course of such correspondence, for their information.  We likewise direct that a copy of such parts of the country correspondence be communicated to our Board of Trade:  (to be constituted as hereinafter mentioned) as may any ways relate to the business of their department.”

You will observe, my Lords, two important circumstances in these instructions:  first, that, after the board had regularly met, the Persian correspondence, kept by the Governor only, was to be communicated to the Council; and, secondly, that he should write