his view,
when by publishing them he left to the world and to the latest posterity
a monument by which it might be seen what course a great public accuser
in a great public cause ought to pursue, and, as connected with it, what
course judges ought to pursue in deciding upon such a cause. In these
orations you will find almost every instance of rapacity and peculation
which we charge upon Mr. Hastings. Undoubtedly, many Roman and English
governors have received corrupt gifts and bribes, under various
pretences. But in the cause before your Lordships there is one species
of disgrace, in the conduct of the party accused, which I defy you to
find in Verres, or in the whole tribe of Roman peculators, in any
governor-general, proconsul, or viceroy. I desire you to consider it not
included in any other class of crimes, but as a species apart by itself.
It is an individual, a single case; but it is like the phoenix,--it
makes a class or species by itself: I mean the business of Nobkissin.
The money taken from him was not money pretended to be received in lieu
of entertainment; it was not money taken from a farmer-general of
revenue, out of an idea that his profits were unreasonable, and greater
than government ought to allow; it was not a donation from a great man,
as an act of his bounty. No, it was a sum of money taken from a private
individual,--or rather, as has been proved to you by Mr. Larkins, his
own book-keeper, money borrowed, for which he had engaged to give his
bond. That he had actually deposited his bond for this money Mr. Larkins
has proved to you,--and that the bond was carried to Nobkissin's credit,
in his account with the government. But Mr. Hastings, when he was
called upon for the money, withdraws the bond; he will not pay the
money; he refused to pay it upon the applications made to him both in
India and here at home; and he now comes to your Lordships and says, "I
borrowed this money, I intended to give my bond for it, as has been
proved before you; but I must have it for my own use." We have heard of
governors being everything that is bad and wicked; but a governor
putting himself in the situation of a common cheat, of a common
swindler, never was, I believe, heard of since the creation of the world
to this day. This does not taste of the common oppressions of power;
this does not taste of the common abuses of office; but it in no way
differs from one of those base swindling cases that come to be tried and