wise he would have sacrificed the good to save the bad:
whereas," says Mr. Hastings, "in effect my principle was to sacrifice
the good, and at the same time to punish the bad." Now compare the
account he gives of the proceedings of Asoph ul Dowlah with his own.
Asoph ul Dowlah, to save some unworthy persons who had jaghires, would,
if left to his own discretion, have confiscated those only of the
deserving; while Mr. Hastings, to effect the inclusion of the worthless
in the confiscation, confiscates the jaghires of the innocent and the
virtuous men of high rank, and of those who had all the ties of Nature
to plead for the Nabob's forbearance, and reduced them to a state of
dependency and degradation.

Now, supposing these two villanous plans, neither of which your
Lordships can bear to hear the sound of, to stand equal in point of
morality, let us see how they stand in point of calculation. The
unexceptionable part of the 285,000_l._ amounted to 260,000_l._ a year;
whereas, supposing every part of the new grants had been made to the
most unworthy persons, it only amounted to 25,000_l._ a year. Therefore,
by his own account, given to you and to the Company, upon this occasion
he has confiscated 260,000_l._ a year, the property of innocent, if not
of meritorious individuals, in order to punish by confiscation those who
had 25,000_l._ a year only. This is the account he gives you himself of
his honor, his justice, and his policy in these proceedings.

But, my Lords, he shall not escape so. It is in your minutes, that so
far was the Nabob from wishing to save the new exceptionable grants,
that, at the time of the forced loan I have mentioned, and also when the
resumption was proposed, he was perfectly willing to give up every one
of them, and desired only that his mother, his uncles, and his
relations, with other individuals, the prime of the Mahometan nobility
of that country, should be spared. Is it not enough that this poor
Nabob, this wretched prince, is made a slave to the man now standing at
your bar, that he is made by him a shame and a scandal to his family,
his race, and his country, but he must be cruelly aspersed, and have
faults and crimes attributed to him that do not belong to him? I know
nothing of his private character and conduct: Mr. Hastings, who deals in
scandalous anecdotes, knows them: but I take it upon the face of Mr.
Purling's assertion, and I say, that the Nabob would have consented to
an arbitrar