the
Directors but the shell and husk of a dry, formal, official
correspondence, which neither means anything nor was intended to mean
anything.

These are some of the methods by which he has defeated the purposes of
the excellent institution of a recorded administration. But there are
cases to be brought before this court in which he has laid the axe at
once to the root,--which was, by delegating out of his own hands a great
department of the powers of the Company, which he was himself bound to
execute, to a board which was not bound to record their deliberations
with the same strictness as he himself was bound. He appointed of his
own usurped authority a board for the administration of the revenue, the
members of which were expressly dispensed from recording their dissents,
until they chose it; and in that office, as in a great gulf, a most
important part of the Company's transactions has been buried.

Notwithstanding his unwearied pains in the work of spoliation, some
precious fragments are left, which we ought infinitely to value,--by
which we may learn, and lament, the loss of what he has destroyed. If it
were not for those inestimable fragments and wrecks of the recorded
government which have been saved from the destruction which Mr.
Hastings intended for them all, the most shameful enormities that have
ever disgraced a government or harassed a people would only be known in
this country by secret whispers and unauthenticated anecdotes; the
disgracer's of government, the vexers and afflicters of mankind, instead
of being brought before an awful public tribunal, might have been
honored with the highest distinctions and rewards their country has to
bestow; and sordid bribery, base peculation, iron-handed extortion,
fierce, unrelenting tyranny, might themselves have been invested with
those sacred robes of justice before which this day they have cause to
tremble.

Mr. Hastings, sensible of what he suffers from this register of acts and
opinions, has endeavored to discredit and ruin what remains of it. He
refuses, in his defence to the House of Commons, in letters to the Court
of Directors, in various writings and declarations, he refuses to be
tried by his own recorded declarations; he refuses to be bound by his
own opinions, delivered under his own hand. He knows that he and the
record cannot exist together. He knows that what remains of the written
constitution which he has not destroyed is enough to destroy him.