five millions sterling. By this purchase he secured the
exhausted remains of an exhausted kingdom, and left it to his grandson,
Surajah Dowlah, in peace and poverty. On the fall of Surajah Dowlah, in
1756, commenced the last, which is the sixth,--the era of the British
empire.

On the fifth dynasty I have only to remark to your Lordships, that at
its close the Hindoo chiefs were almost everywhere found in possession
of the country; that, although Aliverdy Khan was a cruel tyrant, though
he was an untitled usurper, though he racked and tormented the people
under his government, urged, however, by an apparent necessity from an
invading army of one hundred thousand horse in his dominions,--yet,
under him, the rajahs still preserved their rank, their dignity, their
castles, their houses, their seigniories, all the insignia of their
situation, and always the right, sometimes also the means, of protecting
their subordinate people, till the last and unfortunate era of 1756.

Through the whole of this sketch of history I wish to impress but one
great and important truth upon your minds: namely, that, through all
these revolutions in government and changes in power, an Hindoo polity,
and the spirit of an Hindoo government, did more or less exist in that
province with which he was concerned, until it was finally to be
destroyed by Mr. Hastings.

* * * * *

My Lords, I have gone through all the eras precedent to those of the
British power in India, and am come to the first of those eras. Mr.
Hastings existed in India, and was a servant of the Company before that
era, and had his education between both. He is an antediluvian with
regard to the British dominion in Bengal. He was coexistent with all the
acts and monuments of that revolution, and had no small share in all the
abuses of that abusive period which preceded his actual government. Bat
as it was during that transit from Eastern to Western power that most of
the abuses had their origin, it will not be perfectly easy for your
Lordships thoroughly to enter into the nature and circumstances of them
without an explanation of the principal events that happened from the
year 1756 until the commencement of Mr. Hastings's government,--during a
good part of which time we do not often lose sight of him. If I find it
agreeable to your Lordships, if I find that you wish to know these
annals of Indian suffering and British delinquency, if you desire that