omed Reza Khan and Rajah Nundcomar. I wish your Lordships to
recollect this by-and-by, when we shall bring before you the very same
two persons, who, in the same sort of transaction, and in circumstances
exactly similar, or very nearly so, were candidates for the favor of Mr.
Hastings.

My Lords, our next step will be to show you that the Company in 1768 had
made a covenant expressly forbidding the taking of presents of above
400_l._ value in each present by the Governor-General. I take it for
granted, this will not be much litigated. They renewed and enforced that
with other covenants and other instructions; and at last came an act of
Parliament, in the clearest, the most definite, the most specific words
that all the wisdom of the legislature, intent upon the eradication of
this evil, could use, to prevent the receiving of presents.

My Lords, I think it is necessary to state, that there has been some
little difficulty concerning this word, _presents_. Bribery and
extortion have been covered by the name of presents, and the authority
and practice of the East has been adduced as a palliation of the crime.
My Lords, no authority of the East will be a palliation of the breach of
laws enacted in the West: and to those laws of the West, and not the
vicious customs of the East, we insist upon making Mr. Hastings liable.
But do not your Lordships see that this is an entire mistake? that there
never was any custom of the East for it? I do not mean vicious practices
and customs, which it is the business of good laws and good customs to
eradicate. There are three species of presents known in the East,--two
of them payments of money known to be legal, and the other perfectly
illegal, and which has a name exactly expressing it in the manner our
language does. It is necessary that your Lordships should see that Mr.
Hastings has made use of a perversion of the names of authorized gifts
to cover the most abominable and prostituted bribery. The first of those
presents is known in the country by the name of _peshcush_: this
_peshcush_ is a fine paid, upon the grant of lands, to the sovereign, or
whoever grants them. The second is the _nuzzer_, or _nuzzerana_, which
is a tribute of acknowledgment from an inferior to a superior. The last
is called _reshwat_, in the Persian language,--that is to say, a bribe,
or sum of money clandestinely and corruptly taken,--and is as much
distinguished from the others as, in the English language, a fi