Let us now see what was Mr. Hastings's business during this long
protracted visit. First, he tells you that he came there to reduce all
the state and dignity of the Nabob. He tells you that he felt no
compunction in reducing that state; that the elephants, the menagerie,
the stables, all went without mercy, and consequently all the persons
concerned in them were dismissed also. When he came to the abolition of
the pensions, he says,--"I proceeded with great pain, from the
reflection that I was the instrument in depriving whole families, all at
once, of their bread, and reducing them to a state of penury: convinced
of the necessity of the measure, I endeavored to execute it with great
impartiality." Here he states the work he was employed in, when he took
this two hundred pounds a day for his own pay. "It was necessary to
begin with reforming the useless servants of the court, and retrenching
the idle parade of elephants, menageries, &c., which loaded the civil
list. This cost little regret in performing; but the Resident, who took
upon himself the chief share in this business, acknowledges that he
suffered considerably in his feelings, when he came to touch on the
pension list. Some hundreds of persons of the ancient nobility of the
country, excluded, under our government, from almost all employments,
civil or military, had, ever since the revolution, depended on the
bounty of the Nabob; and near ten lacs were bestowed that way. It is not
that the distribution was always made with judgment or impartial, and
much room was left for a reform; but when the question was to cut off
entirely the greatest part, it could not fail to be accompanied with
circumstances of real distress. The Resident declares, that, even with
some of the highest rank, he could not avoid discovering, under all the
pride of Eastern manners, the manifest marks of penury and want. There
was, however, no room left for hesitation: to confine the Nabob's
expenses within the limited sum, it was necessary that pensions should
be set aside."

Here, my Lords, is a man sent to execute one of the most dreadful
offices that was ever executed by man,--to cut off, as he says himself,
with a bleeding heart, the only remaining allowance made for hundreds of
the decayed nobility and gentry of a great kingdom, driven by our
government from the offices upon which they existed. In this moment of
anxiety and affliction, when he says he felt pain and was cut to the
heart