power so to dissolve the Council, that, if he declared it dissolved,
they could not sit and do any legal and regular act. It was a great
question with the lawyers at the time, and there was a difference of
opinion on it. Mr. Sayer was one of those who were inclined to be of
opinion that the Governor-General had a power of dissolving the Council,
and that the Council could not legally sit after such dissolution. But
what was his remark upon Mr. Hastings's conduct?--and you must suppose
his remark of more weight, because, upon the abstract question, he had
given his opinion in favor of Mr. Hastings's judgment. "The meeting of
the Council depends on the pleasure of the Governor; and I think the
duration of it must do so, too. But it was as great a crime to dissolve
the Council upon base and sinister motives as it would be to assume the
power of dissolving, if he had it not. I believe he is the first
Governor that ever dissolved a Council inquiring into his behavior, when
he was innocent. Before he could summon three Councils and dissolve
them, he had time fully to consider what would be the result of such
conduct, _to convince everybody, beyond a doubt, of his conscious
guilt_."

Mr. Sayer, then, among other learned people, (and if he had not been the
man that I have described, yet, from his intimate connection with the
Company, his opinion must be supposed to have great weight,) having used
expressions as strong as the persons who have ever criminated Mr.
Hastings most for the worst of his crimes have ever used to qualify and
describe them, and having ascribed his conduct to base and sinister
motives, he was bound upon that occasion to justify that strong conduct,
allowed to be legal, and charged at the same time to be violent. Mr.
Hastings was obliged then to produce something in his justification. He
never did. Therefore, for all the reasons assigned by himself, drawn
from the circumstances of prosecution and non-prosecution, and from
opinions of lawyers and colleagues, the Court of Directors at the same
time censuring his conduct, and strongly applauding the conduct of those
who were adverse to him, Mr. Hastings was, I say, from those accumulated
circumstances, bound to get rid of the infamy of a conduct which could
be attributed to nothing but base and sinister motives, and which could
have no effect but to convince men of his consciousness that he was
guilty. From all these circumstances I infer that no man could ha