and justice, humanity
and good policy, that did not reprobate this act. The Court of
Directors, when they heard of it, reprobated it in the strongest manner;
the Court of Proprietors reprobated it in the strongest manner; by the
House of Commons, after the most diligent investigation, it was, in a
resolution moved by Mr. Dundas, reprobated in the strongest manner: and
this is the act which Mr. Hastings brings forward before your Lordships
as a merit.

But, again, I can prove that in this, perhaps the most atrocious of all
his demerits, there is a most horrid and nefarious secret corruption
lurking. I can tell your Lordships that Sir Robert Barker was offered by
this Vizier, for about one half of this very country, namely, the
country of the Rohillas, a sum of fifty lacs of rupees,--that is,
500,000_l._ Mr. Hastings was informed of this offer by Sir Robert
Barker, in his letter of the 24th March, 1773. Still, in the face of
this information, Mr. Hastings took for the Company only forty lacs of
rupees. I leave your Lordships to draw your own conclusion from these
facts. You will judge what became of the difference between the price
offered and the price accounted for as taken. Nothing on earth can hide
from mankind why Mr. Hastings made this wicked, corrupt bargain for the
extermination of a brave and generous people,--why he took 400,000_l._
for the whole of that, for half of which he was offered and knew he
might have had 500,000_l._

Your Lordships will observe, that for all these facts there is no
evidence, on the one side or on the other, directly before you. Their
merits have been insisted upon, in long and laborious details and
discussions, both by Mr. Hastings himself and by his counsel. We have
answered them for that reason; but we answer them with a direct
reference to records and papers, from which your Lordships may judge of
them as set-offs and merits. I believe your Lordships will now hardly
receive them as merits to set off guilt, since in every one of them
there is both guilt in the act, and strong ground for presuming that he
had corruptly taken money for himself.

The last act of merit that has been insisted upon by his counsel is the
Mahratta peace. They have stated to you the distresses of the Company to
justify the unhandsome and improper means that he took of making this
peace. Mr. Hastings himself has laid hold of the same opportunity of
magnifying the difficulties which, during his government,