e whole system at once, and, instead of it, he leaves an
Englishman, under pretence of controlling Gunga Govind Sing's agent,
appointed for the very purpose of giving him bribes, in a province where
Mr. Hastings says that agent had the power of committing such
enormities, and which nobody doubts his disposition to commit,--he
leaves him, I say, in such a state of inefficiency, that these
iniquities could be concealed (though every one true) from the person
appointed there to inspect his conduct! What, then, could be his
business there? Was it only to receive such sums of money as Debi Sing
might put into his hands, and which might have been easily sent to
Calcutta? Was he to be of use as a communication between Debi Sing and
the Committee, and in no other way? Here, then, we have that English
authority which Mr. Hastings left in the country,--here the native
authority which he settled, and the establishment of native iniquity in
a regular system under Gunga Govind Sing,--here the destruction of all
English inspection. I hope I need say no more to prove to your Lordships
that this system, taken nakedly as it thus stands, founded in mystery
and obscurity, founded for the very express purpose of conveying
bribes, as the best mode of collecting the revenue and supplying the
Company's exigencies through Gunga Govind Sing, would be iniquitous upon
the face and the statement of it. But when your Lordships consider what
horrid effects it produced, you will easily see what the mischief and
abomination of Mr. Hastings's destroying these Provincial Councils and
protecting these persons must necessarily be. If you had not known in
theory, you must have seen it in practice.

But when both practice and theory concur, there can be no doubt that a
system of private bribery for a revenue, and of private agency for a
constitutional government, must ruin the country where it prevails, must
disgrace the country that uses it, and finally end in the destruction of
the revenue. For what says Mr. Hastings? "I was to have received
40,000_l._ in bribes, and 30,000_l._ was actually applied to the use of
the Company." Now I hope I shall demonstrate, if not, it will be by some
one abler than me demonstrated, in the course of this business, that
there never was a bribe received by Mr. Hastings that was not instantly
followed with a deficiency in the revenue,--this is clear, and what we
undertake to prove,--and that Debi Sing himself was, at the time