e
expect and require you to show your displeasure to all such as
shall transgress in this respect, contrasting it at the same time
with instances of kindness towards the sober, frugal, and
industrious."

My Lords, you see the state in which the Directors conceived the country
to be. That it was in this state is not denied by Mr. Hastings, who was
sent out for the purpose of reforming it. The Directors had swept away
almost the whole body of their Bengal servants for supposed corruption;
and they appointed a set of new ones, to regenerate, as it were, the
government of that country.

Mr. Hastings says, "I was brought to India like other people." This,
indeed, is true; and I hope it will prove an example and instruction to
all mankind never to employ a man who has been bred in base and corrupt
practices, from any hope that his local knowledge may make him the
fittest person to correct such practices. Mr. Hastings goes on to say,
that you could not expect more from him than could be done by a man bred
up, as he was, in the common habits of the country. This is also true.
My Lords, you might as well expect a man to be fit for a perfumer's
shop, who has lain a month in a pig's stye, as to expect that a man who
has been a contractor with the Company for a length of time is a fit
person for reforming abuses. Mr. Hastings has stated in general his
history, his merits, and his services. We have looked over with care the
records relative to his proceedings, and we find that in 1760 and 1761
he was in possession of a contract for bullocks and a contract for
provisions. It is no way wrong for any man to take a contract, provided
he does not do what Mr. Hastings has condemned in his
regulations,--become a contractor with his masters. But though I do not
bear upon Mr. Hastings for having spent his time in being a
bullock-contractor, yet I say that he ought to have laid aside all the
habits of a bullock-contractor when he was made a great minister for the
reformation of a great service full of abuses. I will show your
Lordships that he never did so; that, on the contrary, being bred in
those bad habits, and having had the education that I speak of, he
persevered in the habits which had been formed in him to the very last.

I understand it has been imputed as a sort of a crime in me, that I
stated something of the obscurity of Mr. Hastings's birth. The
imputation has no foundation. Can it be believed that any man