them to that authority; but in all other respects,
except where the act and other subsequent acts have not broken in upon
it, the whole course of the service remains upon the ancient footing,
that is, the commercial footing, as to the gradation and order of
service.

Your Lordships see here a regular series of gradation, which requires
eleven years before any persons can arrive at the highest trusts and
situations. You will therefore be astonished, when so long a
probationary service was required, that effects very different from
those to be expected from long probation have happened, and that in a
much shorter time than those eleven years you have seen persons
returning into this kingdom with affluent, with overbearing fortunes. It
will be a great part of your inquiry, when we come before your Lordships
to substantiate evidence against Mr. Hastings, to discover how that
order came to be so completely broken down and erased that scarce a
trace of it for any good purpose remains. Though I will not deny that
that order, or that any order in a state, may be superseded by the
ruling power, when great talents, upon pressing exigencies, are to be
called forth, yet I must say the order itself was formed upon wise
principles. It furnished the persons who were put in that course of
probation with an opportunity (if circumstances enabled them) of
acquiring experience in business of revenue, trade, and policy. It gave
to those who watched them a constant inspection of their conduct through
all their progress. On the expectants of office it imposed the necessity
of acquiring a character in proportion to their standing, in order that
all which they had gained by the good behavior of years should not be
lost by the misconduct of an hour. It was a great substantial
regulation. But scarce a trace of the true spirit of it remains to be
discovered in Mr. Hastings's government; for Mr. Hastings established
offices, nay, whole systems of offices, and especially a system of
offices in 1781, which being altogether new, none of the rules of
gradation applied to them; and he filled those offices in such a manner
as suited best, not the constitution nor the spirit of the service, but
his own particular views and purposes. The consequence has been, that
persons in the most immature stages of life have been appointed to
conduct affairs which required the greatest maturity of judgment, the
greatest possible temper and moderation. Effects naturally