our
government from one of its greatest defects."

Now, my Lords, the delicacy of the affidavit is no more; the great
arcanum of the state is avowed: it is avowed that the government is
ours,--that the Nabob is nothing. It is avowed to foreign nations; and
the disguise which we have put on, Mr. Hastings states, in his opinion,
to be hurtful to the affairs of the Company. Here we perceive the exact
and the perfect agreement between his character as a delicate
affidavit-maker in a court of justice and his indelicate declarations
upon the records of the Company for the information of the whole world
concerning the real arcanum of the Bengal government.

Now I cannot help praising his consistency upon this occasion, whether
his policy was right or wrong. Hitherto we find the whole consistent, we
find the affidavit perfectly supported. The inferences which delicacy at
first prevented him from producing better recollection and more perfect
policy made him here avow. In this state things continued. The Nabob,
your Lordships see, is dead,--dead in law, dead in politics, dead in a
court of justice, dead upon the records of the Company. Except in mere
animal existence, it is all over with him.

I have now to state to your Lordships, that Mr. Hastings, who has the
power of putting even to death in this way, possesses likewise the art
of restoring to life. But what is the medicine that revives them? Your
Lordships, I am sure, will be glad to know what nostrum, not hitherto
pretended to by quacks in physic, by quacks in politics, nor by quacks
in law, will serve to revive this man, to cover his dead bones with
flesh, and to give him life, activity, and vigor. My Lords, I am about
to tell you an instance of a recipe of such infallible efficacy as was
never before discovered. His cure for all disorders is disobedience to
the commands of his lawful superiors. When the orders of the Court of
Directors are contrary to his own opinions, he forgets them all. Let the
Court of Directors but declare in favor of his own system and his own
positions, and that very moment, merely for the purpose of declaring his
right of rebellion against the laws of his country, he counteracts them.
Then these dead bones arise,--or, to use a language more suitable to
the dignity of the thing, Bayes's men are all revived. "Are these men
dead?" asks Mr. Bayes's friend. "No," says he, "they shall all get up
and dance immediately." But in this ludicrous vie