sions. So here is an
executive constitution in which the chief executive minister is to be in
such a situation and of such a disposition that the chief employment of
the presiding person in the Committee is to guard against him and to
prevent his doing mischief. Here is a man appointed, of the greatest
possible power, of the greatest possible wickedness, in a situation to
exert that power and wickedness for the destruction of the country, and
without doubt it would require the greatest ability and diligence in the
person at the head of that Council to prevent it. Such a constitution,
allowed and alleged by the persons themselves who composed it, was, I
believe, never heard of in the world.

Now that I have done with this part of the system of bribery, your
Lordships will permit me to follow Mr. Hastings to his last parting
scene. He parted with his power, he parted with his situation, he parted
with everything, but he never could part with Gunga Govind Sing. He was
on his voyage, he had embarked, he was upon the Ganges, he had quitted
his government; and his last dying sigh, his last parting voice, was
"Gunga Govind Sing!" It ran upon the banks of the Ganges, as another
plaintive voice ran upon the banks of another river (I forget whose);
his last accents were, "Gunga, Gunga Govind Sing!" It demonstrates the
power of friendship.

It is said by some idle, absurd moralists, that friendship is a thing
that cannot subsist between bad men; but I will show your Lordships the
direct contrary; and, after having shown you what Gunga Govind Sing was,
I shall bring before you Mr. Hastings's last act of friendship for him.
Not that I have quite shown you everything, but pretty well, I think,
respecting this man. There is a great deal concerning his character and
conduct that is laid by, and I do believe, that, whatever time I should
take up in expatiating upon these things, there would be "in the lowest
deep still a lower deep"; for there is not a day of the inquiry that
does not bring to light more and more of this evil against Mr. Hastings.

But before I open the papers relative to this act of Mr. Hastings's
friendship for Gunga Govind Sing, I must re-state some circumstances,
that your Lordships may understand thoroughly the nature of it. Your
Lordships may recollect, that, about the time of the succession of the
minor Rajah of Dinagepore, who was then but five or six years of age,
and when Mr. Hastings left Bengal eight or ni