is that leads me directly to
the presumption of corruption against him in this wicked _aumeeny_
scheme. Now I will admit the whole scheme to have been well intended, I
will forgive the letting all the lands of Bengal by public auction, I
will forgive all he has done with regard to his banians, I shall forgive
him even this commission itself, if he will show your Lordships that
there was the smallest use made of it with regard to the settlement of
the revenues of the Company. If there was not, then there is obviously
one use only that could be made of it, namely, to put all the people of
the whole country under obedience to Gunga Govind Sing. What, then, was
done? Titles and accounts were exacted; the estimate was made, acre by
acre; but we have not been able to find one word on their records of any
return that was made to the Company of this investigation, or of any
settlement or assessment of the country founded upon it, or of any
regulation that was established upon it. Therefore, as an honest man,
and as a man who is standing here for the Commons of Great Britain, I
must not give way to any idle doubts and ridiculous suppositions. I
cannot, I say, entertain any doubts that the only purpose it was
designed to answer was to subject the whole landed interest of the
country to the cruel inquisition of Gunga Govind Sing, and to the cruel
purposes of Mr. Hastings. Show me another purpose and I will give up the
argument: for if there are two ways of accounting for the same act, it
is possible it may be attributed to the better motive; but when we see
that a bad thing was done under pretence of some good, we must attach a
bad motive to it, if the pretence be never fulfilled.

* * * * *

I have now done with the landed interest of Bengal. I have omitted much
which might have been pressed upon your Lordships, not from any
indisposition to remark upon the matter more fully, but because it has
been done already by abler persons; I only wished to make some practical
inferences, which, perhaps, in the hurry of my brother Managers, might
possibly have escaped them; I wished to show you that one system of
known or justly presumed corruption pervades the whole of this business,
from one end to the other. Having thus disposed of the native landed
interest, and the native zemindars or landholders of the country, I pass
to the English government.

My Lords, when we have shown plainly the utter extinction