tive. Your Lordships are
to expect, as undoubtedly you will require, substantial matter of
crimination to be laid open for that purpose at the moment when the
evidence to each charge is ready to be produced to you. Thus your
Lordships will easily separate historical illustration from criminal
opening. For instance, if I stated yesterday to your Lordships, as I
did, the tyranny and cruelty of one of the usurping viceroys, whose
usurpation and whose vices led the way to the destruction of his country
and the introduction of a foreign power, I do not mean to charge Mr.
Hastings with any part of that guilt: what bears upon Mr. Hastings is
his having avowedly looked to such a tyrant and such a usurper as his
model, and followed that pernicious example with a servile fidelity.
When I have endeavored to lay open to your Lordships anything abusive,
or leading to abuse, from defects or errors in the constitution of the
Company's service, I did not mean to criminate Mr. Hastings on any part
of those defects and errors: I state them to show that he took advantage
of the imperfections of the institution to lot in his abuse of the power
with which he was intrusted. If, for a further instance, I have stated
that in general the service of the India Company was insufficient in
legal pay or emolument and abundant in the means of illegal profit, I do
not state that defect as owing to Mr. Hastings; but I state it as a
fact, to show in what manner and on what pretences he did, fraudulently,
corruptly, and for the purposes of his own ambition, take advantage of
that defect, and, under color of reformation, make an illegal, partial,
corrupt rise of emoluments to certain favored persons without regard to
the interests of the service at large,--increasing rather than lessening
the means of illicit emolument, as well as loading the Company with many
heavy and ruinous expenses in avowed salaries and allowances.

Having requested your Lordships to keep in mind, which I trust you would
do even without my taking the liberty of suggesting it to you, these
necessary distinctions, I shall revert to the period at which I closed
yesterday, that great and memorable period which has remotely given
occasion to the trial of this day.

* * * * *

My Lords, to obtain empire is common; to govern it well has been rare
indeed. To chastise the guilt of those who have been instruments of
imperial sway over other nations by the high