atter that ought to astonish you, that the expenses of the collections
were increased by no less a sum than 500,000_l._ You may judge from this
what riot there was in rapacity and ravage, both amongst the European
and native agents, but chiefly amongst the natives: for Mr. Hastings did
not divide the greatest part of this spoil among the Company's servants,
but among this gang of black dependants. These accounts are in pages
1273 and 1274 of your Minutes.

My Lords, weighty indeed would have been the charge brought before your
Lordships by the Commons of Great Britain against the prisoner at your
bar, if they had fixed upon no other crime or misdemeanor than that
which I am now pressing upon you,--his throwing off the allegiance of
the Company, his putting a black master over himself, and his subjecting
the whole of Bengal, Bahar, and Orissa, the whole of the Company's
servants, the Company's revenues, the Company's farms, to Gunga Govind
Sing. But, my Lords, it is a very curious and remarkable thing, that we
have traced this man as Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker up to the time of
the nomination of this Committee; we have traced him through a regular
series of bribery; he is Mr. Hastings's bribe-broker at Patna; he is Mr.
Hastings's bribe-broker at Nuddea; he is his bribe-broker at Dinagepore;
we find him his bribe-broker in all these places; but from the moment
that this Committee was constituted, it became a gulf in which the
prevention, the detection, and the correction of all kind of abuses
were sunk and lost forever. From the time when this Committee and Gunga
Govind Sing were appointed, you do not find one word more of Mr.
Hastings's bribes. Had he then ceased to receive any? or where are you
to look for them? You are to look for them in that 500,000_l._ excess of
expense in the revenue department, and in the rest of all that corrupt
traffic of Gunga Govind Sing of which we gave you specimens at the time
we proved his known bribes to you. These are nothing but index-hands to
point out to you the immense mass of corruption which had its origin,
and was daily accumulating in these provinces, under the protection of
Mr. Hastings. And can you think, and can we talk of such transactions,
without feeling emotions of indignation and horror not to be described?
Can we contemplate such scenes as these,--can we look upon those
desolated provinces, upon a country so ravaged, a people so
subdued,--Mahometans, Gentoos, our own cou