andsome foundation for a college,) and for building which the
Company was charged 5,000_l._: though no vouchers of its expenditure
were ever given by Mr. Hastings. But this is not all. When Lord
Cornwallis came to inquire into it, he found that Mudjed-o-Din had sunk
the income of the estate from 3,000_l._ to 2,000_l._ a year,--in short,
that it had been a scene of peculation, both by the masters and
scholars, as well as of abandonment to every kind of vicious and
licentious courses; and all this without the shadow of any benefit
having been derived from it. The visitors expressly inquired whether
there was any good mixed with all this evil; and they found it was all
bad and mischievous, from one end to the other. Your Lordships will
remark, that the greatest part of this disgusting business must have
been known to Mr. Hastings when he gave to Mudjed-o-Din the disposal of
3,000_l._ a year. And now, my Lords, can you vote this money, expended
in the manner which I have stated to you, to be a set-off in his favor,
in an account for money which was itself swindled from a private
individual?

But there still remains behind another more serious matter belonging to
this affair; and I hope you will not think that I am laying too much
stress upon it, when I declare, that, if I were to select from the whole
of his conduct one thing more dishonorable than another to the British
nation, it would be that which I am now about to mention. I will leave
your Lordships to judge of the sincerity of this declaration, when you
shall have heard read a paper produced by the prisoner in justification
of conduct such as I have stated his to have been. It is the _razinama_,
or attestation, of Munny Begum (the woman whom Mr. Hastings placed in
the seat of justice in that country) concerning this college, made
precisely at the time of this inquisition by Lord Cornwallis into the
management of it. Your Lordships will see what sort of things
attestations are from that country: that they are attestations procured
in diametrical contradiction to the certain knowledge of the party
attesting. It is in page 2350 of your Minutes. Indeed, my Lords, these
are pages which, unless they are effaced by your judgment, will rise up
in judgment against us, some day or other.

"He [Mr. Hastings] respected the learned and wise men, and, in
order for the propagation of learning, he built a college, and
endowed it with a provision for the maintenance o