jah Rajebullub,
whose duty only Gunga Govind Sing virtually is to perform, be reinstated
in the exercise of the duties of his department; and that Gunga Govind
Sing be ordered to deliver up all official papers of the circar to the
Committee of Revenue and the Roy Royan, and that they be ordered
accordingly to take charge of them, and finally settle all accounts."
This motion was overruled, and no final proceeding appears.
My Lords, you have heard the proceedings of the court before which Gunga
Govind Sing thought proper to appeal, in consequence of the power and
protection of Mr. Hastings being understood to exist after he left
India, and authenticated by his last parting deed. Your Lordships will
judge by that last act of Mr. Hastings what the rest of his whole life
was.
My Lords, I do not mean now to go further than just to remind your
Lordships of this, that Mr. Hastings's government was one whole system
of oppression, of robbery of individuals, of destruction of the public,
and of suppression of the whole system of the English government, in
order to vest in the worst of the natives all the powers that could
possibly exist in any government,--in order to defeat the ends which all
governments ought in common to have in view. Thus, my Lords, I show you
at one point of view what you are to expect from him in all the rest. I
have, I think, made out as clear as can be to your Lordships, so far as
it was necessary to go, that his bribery and peculation was not
occasional, but habitual,--that it was not urged upon him at the moment,
but was regular and systematic. I have shown to your Lordships the
operation of such a system on the revenues.
My Lords, Mr. Hastings pleads one constant merit to justify those
acts,--namely, that they produce an increase of the public revenue; and
accordingly he never sells to any of those wicked agents any trusts
whatever in the country, that you do not hear that it will considerably
tend to the increase of the revenue. Your Lordships will see, when he
sold to wicked men the province of Bahar in the same way in which Debi
Sing had this province of Dinagepore, that consequences of a horrid and
atrocious nature, though not to so great an extent, followed from it. I
will just beg leave to state to your Lordships, that the kingdom of
Bahar is annexed to the kingdom of Bengal; that this kingdom was
governed by another Provincial Council; that he turned out that
Provincial Council, and sold
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