ct and rigorous performance of them, but they sent
a commission to enforce the observance of them more strongly; and that
commission had it specially in charge never to receive presents. They
never sent out a person to India without recognizing the grievance, and
without ordering that presents should not be received, as the main
fundamental part of their duty, and upon which all the rest depended, as
it certainly must: for persons at the head of government should not
encourage that by example which they ought by precept, authority, and
force to restrain in all below them. That commission failing, another
commission was preparing to be sent out with the same instructions, when
an act of Parliament took it up; and that act, which gave Mr. Hastings
power, did mould in the very first stamina of his power this principle,
in words the most clear and forcible that an act of Parliament could
possibly devise upon the subject. And that act was made not only upon a
general knowledge of the grievance, but your Lordships will see in the
reports of that time that Parliament had directly in view before them
the whole of that monstrous head of corruption under the name of
presents, and all the monstrous consequences that followed it.

Now, my Lords, every office of trust, in its very nature, forbids the
receipt of bribes. But Mr. Hastings was forbidden it, first, by his
official situation,--next, by covenant,--and lastly, by act of
Parliament: that is to say, by all the things that bind mankind, or that
can bind them,--first, moral obligation inherent in the duty of their
office,--next, the positive injunctions of the legislature of the
country,--and lastly, a man's own private, particular, voluntary act and
covenant. These three, the great and only obligations that bind mankind,
all united in the focus of this single point,--that they should take no
presents.

I am to mark to your Lordships, that this law and this covenant did
consider indirect ways of taking presents--taking them by others, and
such like--directly in the very same light as they considered taking
them by themselves. It is perhaps a much more dangerous way; because it
adds to the crime a false, prevaricating mode of concealing it, and
makes it much more mischievous by admitting others into the
participation of it. Mr. Hastings has said, (and it is one of the
general complaints of Mr. Hastings,) that he is made answerable for the
acts of other men. It is a thing inhere