eye of
Parliament, before the writers of them have time to invent an excuse for
a direct contrary conduct to that to which their former pretended
principles applied. This is a great, a material part of the constitution
of the Company. My Lords, I do not think it to be much apologized for,
if I repeat, that this is the fundamental regulation of that service,
and which, if preserved in the first instance, as it ought to be, in
official practice in India, and then used as it ought to be in England,
would afford such a mode of governing a great, foreign, dispersed
empire, as, I will venture to say, few countries ever possessed, even in
governing the most limited and narrow jurisdiction.

It was the great business of Mr. Hastings's policy to subvert this great
political edifice. His first mode of subverting it was by commanding the
public ministers, paid by the Company, to deliver their correspondence
upon the most critical and momentous affairs to him, in order to be
suppressed and destroyed at his pleasure. To support him in this plan of
spoliation, he has made a mischievous distinction in public business
between public and private correspondence. The Company's orders and
covenants made none. There are, readily I admit, thousands of occasions
in which it is not proper to divulge promiscuously a private
correspondence, though on public affairs, to the world; but there is no
occasion in which it is not a necessary duty, on requisition, to
communicate your correspondence to those who form the paramount
government, on whose interests and on whose concerns and under whose
authority this correspondence has been carried on. The very same reasons
which require secrecy with regard to others demand the freest
communication to them. But Mr. Hastings has established principles of
confidence and secrecy towards himself which have cut off all confidence
between the Directors and their ministers, and effectually kept them at
least out of the secret of their own affairs.

Without entering into all the practices by which he has attempted to
maim the Company's records, I shall state one more to your
Lordships,--that is, his avowed appointment of spies and under-agents,
who shall carry on the real state business, while there are public and
ostensible agents who are not in the secret. The correspondence of those
private agents he holds in his own hands, communicates as he thinks
proper, but most commonly withholds. There remains nothing for