252, and you will find more than 2,500,000_l._ to be provided for that
set of gentlemen, and for the claims of patronage. Undoubtedly such a
patronage is worse than the most dreadful calamities of war, and all the
other causes which lead to decline of dominion.

My Lords, I beseech you to consider this plan of corrupting the
Company's servants, beginning with systematical corruption, and ending
with an avowed declaration that he will persist in this iniquitous
proceeding, and to the utmost of his power entail it upon the Company,
for the purpose of securing his accomplices against all the consequences
of any change in the Company's government. "I dare not," says he, "be
honest: if I make their fortunes, you will judge favorably of me; if I
do not make their fortunes, I shall find myself crushed with a load of
reproach and obloquy, from which I cannot escape in any other way than
by bribing the House of Peers." What a shameful avowal this to be made
in the face of the world! Your Lordships' judgment upon this great cause
will obliterate it from the memory of man.

But his apprehension of some change in the Company's government is not
his only pretext for some of these corrupt proceedings; he adverts also
to the opposition which he had to encounter with his colleagues, as
another circumstance which drove him to adopt others of these scandalous
expediences. Now there was a period when he had no longer to contend
with, or to fear, that opposition.

When he had got rid of the majority in the Council, which thwarted him,
what did he do? Did he himself correct any of the evils and disorders
which had prevailed in the service, and which his hostile majority had
purposed to reform? No, not one,--notwithstanding the Court of Directors
had supported the majority in all their declarations, and had accused
him of corruption and rebellion in every part of his opposition to them.
Now that he was free from the yoke of all the mischief of that cursed
majority which he deprecates, and which I have heard certain persons
consider as a great calamity, (a calamity indeed it was to
patronage,)--as soon, I say, as he was free from this, you would imagine
he had undertaken some great and capital reformation; for all the power
which the Company could give was in his hands,--total, absolute, and
unconfined.

I must here remind your Lordships, that the Provincial Councils was an
establishment made by Mr. Hastings. So confident was he in his own