t is ordered that no
presents exceeding 200_l._ [400_l._?] shall be accepted upon any
pretence for an entertainment. The covenant was intended to put an end
to the custom of receiving money for entertainments, even when visiting
an independent Oriental prince. But your Lordships know that the Nabob
was no prince, but a poor, miserable, undone dependant upon, the
Company. The present was also taken by Mr. Hastings at a time when he
went upon the cruel commission of cutting down the Nabob's allowance
from 400,000_l._ to 260,000_l._ [160,000_l._?], and when he was reducing
to beggary thousands of persons who were dependent for bread upon the
Nabob, and ruining, perhaps, forty thousand others. I shall say no more
upon that subject, though, in truth, it is a thing upon which much
observation might be made.

* * * * *

I shall now pass on to another article connected with, though not making
a direct part of, that of corrupt bribery: I mean the swindling
subterfuges by which he has attempted to justify his corrupt practices.
At one time, he defends them by pleading the necessities of his own
affairs,--as when he takes presents and entertainments avowedly for his
own profits. At another time he defends them by pleading the goodness of
his intentions: he intended, he says, to give the money to the Company.
His last plea has something in it (which shall I say?) of a more awful
or of a more abandoned character, or of both. In the settlement of his
public account, before he left India, he takes credit for a bond which
he had received from Nobkissin upon some account or other. He then,
returns to England, and what does he do? Pay off? No. Give up the bond
to the Company? No. He says, "I will account to the Company for this
money." And when he comes to give this account of the expenditure of
this money, your Lordships will not be a little astonished at the items
of it. One is for founding a Mahometan college. It is a very strange
thing that Rajah Nobkissin, who is a Gentoo, should be employed by Mr.
Hastings to found a Mahometan college. We will allow Mr. Hastings, who
is a Christian, or would be thought a Christian, to grow pious at last,
and, as many others have done, who have spent their lives in fraud,
rapacity, and peculation, to seek amends and to expiate his crimes by
charitable foundations. Nay, we will suppose Mr. Hastings to have taken
it into his head to turn Mahometan, (Gentoo he could not,