ay not depend
upon the fugitive memory of a thing not so well, perhaps, or powerfully
expressed as it ought to be, and in order to give every advantage to the
defendant, and to give every facility to your Lordships' judgment: and
this will, I believe, be thought a clear and fair way of proceeding.
Your Lordships will then judge whether Mr. Hastings's conduct at the
time, his resisting an inquiry, preventing his servant appearing as an
evidence, discountenancing and discouraging his colleagues, raising
every obstruction to the prosecution, dissolving the Council,
preventing evidence and destroying it as far as lay in his power by
collateral means, be not also such presumptive proofs as give double
force to all the positive proof we produce against him.

The lac and a half, I know, he means to support upon the custom of
entertainment; and your Lordships will judge whether or not a man who
was ordered and had covenanted never to take more than 400_l._ could
take 16,000_l._ under color of an entertainment. That which he intends
to produce as a justification we charge, and your Lordships and the
world will think, to be the heaviest aggravation of his crime. And after
explaining to your Lordships the circumstances under which this
justification is made, and leaving a just impression of them upon your
minds, I shall beg your Lordships' indulgence to finish this member of
the business to-morrow.

It is stated and entered in the account, that an entertainment was
provided for Mr. Hastings at the rate of 200_l._ a day. He stayed at
Moorshedabad for near three months; and thus you see that visits from
Mr. Hastings are pretty expensive things: it is at the rate of
73,000_l._ a year for his entertainment. We find that Mr. Middleton, an
English gentleman who was with him, received likewise (whether under the
same pretence I know not, and it does not signify) another sum equal to
it; and if these two gentlemen had stayed in that country a year, their
several allowances would have been 146,000_l._ out of the Nabob's
allowance of 160,000_l._ a year: they would have eat up nearly the whole
of it. And do you wonder, my Lords, that such guests and such hosts are
difficult to be divided? Do you wonder that such visits, when so well
paid for and well provided for, were naturally long? There is hardly a
prince in Europe who would give to another prince of Europe from his
royal hospitality what was given upon this occasion to Mr. Hastings.