he protection and support of
guilt, that such an escape is enough for them? that an Old Bailey
acquittal is enough to establish a fitness for trust? and if a man shall
go acquitted out of such a court, because the judges are bound to acquit
him against the conviction of their own opinion, when every man in the
market-place knows that he is guilty, that he is fit for a trust? Is it
a lesson to be held out to the servants of the Company, that, upon the
first inquiry which is made into corruption, and that in the highest
trust, by the persons authorized to inquire into it, he uses all the
powers of that trust to quash it,--vilifying his colleagues, vilifying
his accuser, abusing everybody, but never denying the charge? His
associates and colleagues, astonished at this conduct, so wholly unlike
everything that had ever appeared of innocence, request him to consider
a little better. They declare they are not his accusers; they tell him
they are not his judges; that they, under the orders of the Company, are
making an inquiry which he ought to make. He declares he will not make
it. Being thus driven to the wall, he says, "Why do you not form
yourselves into a committee? I won't suffer these proceedings to go on
as long as I am present." Mr. Hastings plainly had in view, that, if the
proceedings had been before a committee, there would have been a doubt
of their authenticity, as not being before a regular board; and he
contended that there could be no regular board without his own presence
in it: a poor, miserable scheme for eluding this inquiry; partly by
saying that it was carried on when he was not present, and partly by
denying the authority of this board.

I will have nothing to do with the great question that arose upon the
Governor-General's resolution to dissolve a board, whether the board
have a right to sit afterwards; it is enough that Mr. Hastings would not
suffer them, as a Council, to examine into what, as a Council, they were
bound to examine into. He absolutely declared the Council dissolved,
when they did not accept his committee, for which they had many good
reasons, as I shall show in reply, if necessary, and which he could have
no one good reason for proposing;--he then declares the Council
dissolved. The Council, who did not think Mr. Hastings had a power to
dissolve them while proceeding in the discharge of their duty, went on
as a Council. They called in Nundcomar to support his charge: Mr.
Hastings with