the Company's authority; what Mr. Hastings himself
thought of him; what the judges thought of him; and what all the world
thought of him.

I must first make your Lordships acquainted with a little preliminary
matter. A man named Roy Rada Churn had been appointed vakeel, or agent,
to manage the Nabob's affairs at Calcutta. One of this man's creditors
attached him there. Roy Rada Churn pleaded his privilege as the vakeel
or representative of a sovereign prince. The question came to be tried
in the Supreme Court, and the issue was, Whether the Nabob was a
sovereign prince or not. I think the court did exceedingly wrong in
entertaining such a question; because, in my opinion, whether he was or
was not a sovereign prince, any person representing him ought to be left
free, and to have a proper and secure means of concerting his affairs
with the Council. It was, however, taken otherwise; the question was
brought to trial, whether the Nabob was a sovereign prince sufficient to
appoint and protect a person to manage his affairs, under the name of an
ambassador. In that cause did Mr. Hastings come forward to prove, by a
voluntary affidavit, that he had no pretensions, no power, no authority
at all,--that he was a mere pageant, a thing of straw,--and that the
Company exercised every species of authority over him, in every
particular, and in every respect; and that, therefore, to talk of him as
an efficient person was an affront to the common sense of mankind: and
this you will find the judges afterwards declared to be their opinion.

I will here press again one remark, which perhaps you may recollect that
I have made before, that the chief and most usual mode in which all the
villanies perpetrated in India, by Mr. Hastings and his co-partners in
iniquity, has been through the medium and instrumentality of persons
whom they pretended to have rights of their own, and to be acting for
themselves; whereas such persons were, in fact, totally dependent upon
him, Mr. Hastings, and did no one act that was not prescribed by him.
In order, therefore, to let you see the utter falsehood, fraud,
prevarication, and deceit of the pretences by which the native powers of
India are represented to be independent, and are held up as the
instruments of defying the laws of this kingdom, under pretext of their
being absolute princes, I will read the affidavit of Warren Hastings,
Esquire, Governor-General of Bengal, made the 31st July, 1775.

"Th