w of Mr. Hastings's
conduct, your Lordships must not lose sight of its great importance. You
cannot have in an abstract, as it were, any one thing that better
develops the principles of the man, that more fully develops all the
sources of his conduct, and of all the frauds and iniquities which he
has committed, in order at one and the same time to evade his duty to
the Court of Directors, that is to say, to the laws of his country, and
to oppress, crush, rob, and ill-treat the people that are under him.

My Lords, you have had an account of the person who represented the
Nabob's dignity, Mahomed Reza Khan; you have heard of the rank he bore,
the sufferings that he went through, his trial and honorable acquittal,
and the Company's order that the first opportunity should be taken to
appoint him Naib Subah, or deputy of the Nabob, and more especially to
represent him in the administering of justice. Your Lordships are also
acquainted with what was done in consequence of those orders by the
Council-General, in the restoration and reestablishment of the executive
power in this person,--not in the poor Nabob, a poor, helpless,
ill-bred, ill-educated boy, but in the first Mussulman of the country,
who had before exercised the office of Naib Subah, or deputy
viceroy,--in order to give some degree of support to the expiring honor
and justice of that country. The majority, namely, General Clavering,
Colonel Monson, and Mr. Francis, whose names, as I have before said,
will, for obedience to the Company, fidelity to the laws, honor to
themselves, and a purity untouched and unimpeached, stand distinguished
and honored, in spite of all the corrupt and barking virulence of India
against them,--these men, I say, obeyed the Company: they had no secret
or fraudulent connection with Mahomed Reza Khan; but they reinstated him
in his office.

The moment that real death had carried away two of the most virtuous of
this community, and that Mr. Hastings was thereby reestablished in his
power, he returned to his former state of rebellion to the Company, and
of fraud and oppression upon the people. And here we come to the
revivificating medicine. I forgot to tell your Lordships, that this
Nabob, whose letters were declared by a court of law, with his own
approbation, to be in effect letters of the Governor-General and
Council, concludes a formal application transmitted to them, and dated
17th November, 1777, with a demand of the restoration of