this
Mohun Persaud, the subject of which he had no doubt was his ruin. In the
year 1775 he was hanged by those incorrupt English judges who were sent
to India by Parliament to protect the natives from oppression.

Your Lordships will observe that this new sale of the office of
ministers succeeded to the sale of that of nabobs. All these varied and
successive sales shook the country to pieces. As if those miserable
exhausted provinces were to be cured of inanition by phlebotomy, while
Cossim Ali was racking it above, the Company were drawing off all its
nutriment below. A dreadful, an extensive, and most chargeable war
followed. Half the northern force of India poured down like a torrent on
Bengal, endangered our existence, and exhausted all our resources. The
war was the fruit of Mr. Hastings's cabals. Its termination, as usual,
was the result of the military merit and the fortune of this nation.
Cossim Ali, after having been defeated toy the military genius and
spirit of England, (for the Adamses, Monroes, and others of that period,
I believe, showed as much skill and bravery as any of their
predecessors,) in his flight swept away above three millions in money,
jewels, or effects, out of a country which he had plundered and
exhausted by his unheard-of exactions. However, he fought his way like a
retiring lion, turning his face to his pursuers. He still fought along
his frontier. His ability and his money drew to his cause the Subahdar
of Oude, the famous Sujah ul Dowlah. The Mogul entered into these wars,
and penetrated into the lower provinces on one side, whilst Bulwant
Sing, the Rajah of Benares, entered them on another. After various
changes of party and changes of fortune, the loss which began in the
treachery of the civil service was, as I have before remarked, redeemed
by military merit. Many examples of the same sort have since been seen.

Whilst these things were transacted in India, the Court of Directors in
London, hearing of so many changes, hearing of such an incredible mass
of perfidy and venality, knowing that there was a general market made of
the country and of the Company, that the flame of war spread from
province to province, that, in proportion as it spread, the fire glowed
with augmented fierceness, and that the rapacity which originally gave
rise to it was following it in all its progress,--the Company, my Lords,
alarmed not only for their acquisitions, but their existence, and
finding themselve