ir sole and
proper use and benefit, all and every such gifts, rewards, gratuities,
allowances, donations, or compensations whatsoever, which, contrary to
the true intent and meaning of these presents, shall come into the
hands, possession, or power of the said Warren Hastings, or any other
person or persons in trust for him or for his use."

The nature of the covenant, the act of Parliament, and the Company's
orders are clear. First, they have not forbidden their
Governor-General, nor any of their Governors, to take and accept from
the princes of the country, openly and publicly, for their use, any
territories, lands, sums of money, or other donations, which may be
offered in consequence of treaty or otherwise. It was necessary to
distinguish this from every other species of acceptance, because many
occasions occurred in which fines were paid to the Company in
consequence of treaties; and it was necessary to authorize the receipt
of the same in the Company's treasury, as an open and known proceeding.
It was never dreamed that this should justify the taking of bribes,
privately and clandestinely, by the Governor, or any other servant of
the Company, for the purpose of its future application to the Company's
use. It is declared that all such bribes and money received should be
the property of the Company. And why? As a means of recovering them out
of the corrupt hands that had taken them. And therefore this was not a
license for bribery, but a prohibitory and penal clause, providing the
means of coercion, and making the prohibition stronger. Now Mr. Hastings
has found out that this very coercive clause, which was made in order to
enable his superiors to get at him and punish him for bribery, is a
license for him to receive bribes. He is not only a practitioner of
bribery, but a professor, a doctor upon the subject. His opinion is,
that he might take presents or bribes to himself; he considers the penal
clause which the Company attached to their prohibition, and by which all
such bribes are constructively declared to be theirs, in order to
recover them out of his hands, as a license to receive bribes, to extort
money; and he goes with the very prohibition in his hand, the very
means by which he was to be restrained, to exercise an unlimited
bribery, peculation, and extortion over the unhappy natives of the
country.

The moment he finds that the Company has got a scent of any one of his
bribes, he comes forward and says,