s of humanity,
and even those of your own interest, it is only by adopting
measures for the gradual cultivation and improvement of these waste
lands, and by a gentle and cautious plan for the resumption of
lands that have been fraudulently alienated, that it ought ever to
be attempted to be accomplished. Men of speculative and sanguine
dispositions, and others, either from ignorance of the subject, or
with views of recommending themselves to your favor, may
confidently hold forth specious grounds to encourage you to hope
that a great and immediate accession to that branch of your revenue
might be practicable. My public duty obliges me to caution you, in
the most serious manner, against listening to propositions which
recommend this attempt; because I am clearly convinced, that, if
carried into execution, they would be attended with the most
baneful consequences.' (Paragraph 40.) 'Desperate adventurers,
without fortune or character, would undoubtedly be found, as has
already been too often experienced, to rent the different districts
of the country at the highest rates that could be put upon them;
that [but?] the delusion would be of a short duration, and the
impolicy and inhumanity of the plan would, when perhaps too late
for effectual remedy, become apparent by the complaints of the
people and the disappointments at the treasury in the payments of
the revenue, and would probably terminate in the ruin and
depopulation of the unfortunate country':--whether your Lordship
recollects to have written anything to that effect about that
time?--_A._ I perfectly recollect having written the extracts that
have been read."

My Lords, Lord Cornwallis has been called, he has been examined before
you. We stopped our proceedings ten days for the purpose of taking his
evidence. We do not regret this delay. And he has borne the testimony
which you have heard to the effects of Mr. Hastings's government of a
country once the most fertile and cultivated, of a people the most
industrious, flourishing, and happy,--that the one was wasted and
desolated, the other reduced to a condition of want and misery, and that
the zemindars, that is, the nobility and gentry of the country, were so
beggared as not to be able to give even a common decent education to
their children, notwithstanding the foundation of Mr. Hastings'