When questioned upon this subject at your Lordships’ bar, he gives this evidence.—­“Q. What was your motive for proposing that investigation?—­A. A letter from the Court of Directors; I conceived it to be ordered by them.—­Q. Did you conceive the letter of the Court of Directors positively to direct that inquiry?—­A. I did so certainly at the time, and I beg to refer to the minutes which expressed it.”—­A question was put to the same witness by a noble lord. “Q. The witness has stated, that at the time he has mentioned he conceived the letter from the Court of Directors to order an inquiry, and that it was upon that opinion that he regulated his conduct, and his proposal for such inquiry.  I wish to know whether the expression, ‘at the time,’ was merely casual, or am I to understand from it that the witness has altered his opinion of the intention of this letter since that time?—­A. I certainly retain that opinion, and I wished the inquiry to go on.”

My Lords, you see that his colleagues so understood it; you see that we so understood it; and still you have heard the prisoner, after charging us with falsehood, insultingly tell us we may go on as we please, we may go on in our own way.  If your Lordships think that it was not a positive order, which Mr. Hastings was bound to obey, you will acquit him of the breach of it.  But it is a most singular thing, among all the astonishing circumstances of this case, that this man, who has heard from the beginning to the end of his trial breaches of the Company’s orders constantly charged upon him,—­(nay, I will venture to say, that there is not a single step that we have taken in this prosecution, or in observations upon evidence, in which we have not charged him with an avowed direct breach of the Company’s order,—­you have heard it ten times this day,—­in his defence before the Commons he declares he did intentionally, in naming Mr. Markham, break the Company’s orders,)—­it is singular, I say, that this man should now pretend to be so sore upon this point.  What is it now that makes him break through all the rules of common decency and common propriety, and show all the burnings of guilt, upon being accused of the breach of one of the innumerable orders which he has broken, of which he has avowed the breaking, and attempted to justify himself a thousand times in the Company’s books for having broken?

My Lords, one of his own body, one of the Council, has sworn at your bar what he repeatedly declared to be his sense of it.  We consider it as one of the strongest orders that can be given, because the reason of the order is added to it:  the Directors declaring, that, if it should not be found upon inquiry, (you see, my Lords, it puts the very case,)—­“if you do not find such and such things, we shall consider the English honor wounded and stained, and we direct you to make reparation.”  There are, in fact, two orders contained in this letter, which we