eive nothing in it but money paid to the supreme
magistrate for his private emolument. All that the natives could
possibly perceive in such a transaction must be highly dishonorable to
the Company's government; for they must conceive, when they gave money
to Mr. Hastings, that they bought from Mr. Hastings either what was
their own right or something that was not so, or that they redeemed
themselves from some acts of rigor inflicted, threatened, or
apprehended. If, in the first case, Mr. Hastings gave them the object
for which they bargained, his act, however proper, was corrupt,--if he
did not, it was both corrupt and fraudulent; if the money was extorted
by force or threats, it was oppressive and tyrannical. The very nature
of such transactions has a tendency to teach the natives to pay a
corrupt court to the servants of the Company; and they must thereby be
rendered less willing, or less able, or perhaps both, to fulfil their
engagements to the state. Mr. Scott's evidence asserts that they would
rather give to Mr. Hastings than lend to the Company. It is very
probable; but it is a demonstration of their opinion of his power and
corruption, and of the weak and precarious state of the Company's
authority.

The second principle assumed by Mr. Hastings for his justification,
namely, that factious opposition and a divided government might create
exigencies requiring such supplies, is full as dangerous as the first;
for, if, in the divisions which must arise in all councils, one member
of government, when he thinks others factiously disposed, shall be
entitled to take money privately from the subject for the purposes of
his politics, and thereby to dispense with an act of Parliament,
pretences for that end cannot be wanting. A dispute may always be raised
in council in order to cover oppression and peculation elsewhere. But
these principles of Mr. Hastings tend entirely to destroy the character
and functions of a council, and to vest them in one of the dissentient
members. The law has placed the sense of the whole in the majority; and
it is not a thing to be suffered, that any of the members should
privately raise money for the avowed purpose of defeating that sense, or
for promoting designs that are contrary to it: a more alarming
assumption of power in an individual member of any deliberative or
executive body cannot be imagined. Mr. Hastings had no right, in order
to clear himself of peculation, to criminate the majorit