's servants by such visits.

Your Lordships will see that there are grounds for suspicion, not
supported with the same evidence, but with evidence of great
probability, that there was another entertainment given at the expense
of another lac of rupees; and there is also great probability that Mr.
Hastings received two lac of rupees, and Mr. Middleton another lac. The
whole of the Nabob's revenues would have been exhausted by these two
men, if they had stayed there a whole year: and they stayed three
months. Nothing will be secured from the Company's servants, so long as
they can find, under this name, or under pretence of any corrupt custom
of the country, a vicious excuse for this corrupt practice. The excuse
is worse than the thing itself. I leave it, then, with your judgment to
decide whether you will or not, if this justification comes before you,
establish a principle which would put all Bengal in a worse situation
than an hostile army could do, and ruin all the Company's servants by
sending them from their duty to go round robbing the whole country under
the name of entertainments.

My Lords, I have now done with this first part,--namely, the presumption
arising from his refusal to make any defence, on pretence that the
charge brought against him might be referred to a court of justice, and
from the non-performance of his promise to give satisfaction to his
employers,--and when that pretence was removed, still refusing to give
that satisfaction, though suffering as he did under a load of infamy and
obloquy, and though urged to give it by persons of the greatest
character. I have stated this to your Lordships as the strongest
presumption of guilt, and that this presumption is strengthened by the
very excuse which he fabricated for a part of his bribes, when he knew
that the proof of them was irresistible, and that this excuse is a high
aggravation of his guilt,--that this excuse is not supported by law,
that it is not supported by reason, that it does not stand with his
covenant, but carries with it a manifest proof of corruption, and that
it cannot be justified by any principle, custom, or usage whatever. My
Lords, I say I have done with the presumption arising from his conduct
as it regarded the fact specifically charged against him, and with
respect to the relation he stood in to the Court of Directors, and from
the attempt he made to justify that conduct. I believe your Lordships
will think both one and the ot