s
colleges. You have heard this noble person, who had been an eye-witness
of what he relates, supplicating for their relief, and expressly stating
that most of the complicated miseries, and perhaps the cruelest of the
afflictions they endured, arose from the management of the country
having been taken out of the hands of its natural rulers, and given up
to Mr. Hastings's farmers, namely, the banians of Calcutta. These are
the things that ought to go to your Lordships' hearts. You see a country
wasted and desolated. You see a third of it become a jungle for wild
beasts. You see the other parts oppressed by persons in the form and
shape of men, but with all the character and disposition of beasts of
prey. This state of the country is brought before you, and by the most
unexceptionable evidence,--being brought forward through Mr. Hastings
himself. This evidence, whatever opinion you may entertain of the
effrontery or of the impudence of the criminal who has produced it, is
of double and treble force. And yet at the very time when Lord
Cornwallis is giving this statement of the country and its inhabitants,
at the very time when he is calling for pity upon their condition, are
these people brought forward to bear testimony to the benign and
auspicious government of Mr. Hastings, directed, as your Lordships know
it was, by the merciful and upright Gunga Govind Sing.

My Lords, you have now the evidence of Lord Cornwallis on the one hand,
and the razinamas of India on the other. But before I dismiss this part
of my subject, I must call your Lordships' attention to another
authority,--to a declaration, strictly speaking, _legal_, of the state
to which our Indian provinces were reduced, and of the oppressions which
they have suffered, during the government of Mr. Hastings: I speak of
the act 24 Geo. III. cap. 25, intituled, "An act for the better
regulation and management of the affairs of the East India Company, and
of the British possessions in India, and for establishing a court of
judicature for the more speedy and effectual trial of persons accused of
offences committed in the East Indies," Sec. 39.

My Lords, here is an act of Parliament; here are regulations enacted in
consequence of an inquiry which had been directed to be made into the
grievances of India, for the redress of them. This act of Parliament
declares the existence of oppressions in the country. What oppressions
were they? The oppressions which it suffered b