r the Company's service. He put absolutely into his own
pocket eighteen thousand pounds, besides his salary.

Consider, my Lords, the consequences of this species of iniquity. If any
servant of the Company, high in station, chooses to make a visit from
Calcutta to Moorshedabad, which Moorshedabad was then the residence of
our principal revenue government,--if he should choose to take an
airing for his health, if he has a fancy to make a little voyage for
pleasure as far as Moorshedabad, in one of those handsome barges or
budgeros of which you have heard so much in his charge against
Nundcomar, he can put twenty thousand pounds into his pocket any day he
pleases, in defiance of all our acts of Parliament, covenants, and
regulations.

Do you make your laws, do you make your covenants, for the very purpose
of their being evaded? Is this the purpose for which a British tribunal
sits here, to furnish a subject for an epigram, or a tale for the
laughter of the world? Believe me, my Lords, the world is not to be thus
trifled with. But, my Lords, you will never trifle with your duty. You
have a gross, horrid piece of corruption before you,--impudently
confessed, and more impudently defended. But you will not suffer Mr.
Hastings to say, "I have only to go to Moorshedabad, or to order the
Nabob to meet me half way, and I can set aside and laugh at all your
covenants and acts of Parliament." Is this all the force and power of
the covenant by which you would prevent the servants of the Company from
committing acts of fraud and oppression, that they have nothing to do
but to amuse themselves with a tour of pleasure to Moorshedabad in order
to put any sum of money in their pocket that they please?

But they justify themselves by saying, such things have been practised
before. No doubt they have; and these covenants were made that they
should not be practised any more. But your Lordships are desired to say,
that the very custom which the covenant is made to destroy, the very
grievance itself, may be pleaded; the abuse shall be admitted to
destroy the law made to prevent it. It is impossible, I venture to say,
that your Lordships should act thus. The conduct of the criminal is not
half so abhorrent as the justification is affronting to justice, whilst
it tends to vilify and degrade the dignity of the Peerage and the
character of the Commons of Great Britain, before the former and against
the latter of which such a justification is pr