e
General Court could assemble, they assembled to demonstrate who they
really were. Regardless of the proceedings of this House, they ordered
the Directors not to carry into effect any resolution they might come to
for the removal of Mr. Hastings and Mr. Hornby. The Directors, still
retaining some shadow of respect to this House, instituted an inquiry
themselves, which continued from June to October, and, after an
attentive perusal and full consideration of papers, resolved to take
steps for removing the persons who had been the objects of our
resolution, but not without a violent struggle against evidence. Seven
Directors went so far as to enter a protest against the vote of their
court. Upon this the General Court takes the alarm: it reassembles; it
orders the Directors to rescind their resolution, that is, not to recall
Mr. Hastings and Mr. Hornby, and to despise the resolution of the House
of Commons. Without so much as the pretence of looking into a single
paper, without the formality of instituting any committee of inquiry,
they superseded all the labors of their own Directors and of this House.

It will naturally occur to ask, how it was possible that they should not
attempt some sort of examination into facts, as a color for their
resistance to a public authority proceeding so very deliberately, and
exerted, apparently at least, in favor of their own. The answer, and the
only answer which can be given, is, that they were afraid that their
true relation should be mistaken. They were afraid that their patrons
and masters in India should attribute their support of them to an
opinion of their cause, and not to an attachment to their power. They
were afraid it should be suspected that they did not mean blindly to
support them in the use they made of that power. They determined to show
that they at least were set against reformation: that they were firmly
resolved to bring the territories, the trade, and the stock of the
Company to ruin, rather than be wanting in fidelity to their nominal
servants and real masters, in the ways they took to their private
fortunes.

Even since the beginning of this session, the same act of audacity was
repeated, with the same circumstances of contempt of all the decorum of
inquiry on their part, and of all the proceedings of this House. They
again made it a request to their favorite, and your culprit, to keep his
post,--and thanked and applauded him, without calling for a paper which