ese are not mere
words, I will exemplify as I go through the detail: I will show you that
every one of the things I have stated are truths, in fact, and that
these men are bound by the condition of their recognized fidelity to Mr.
Hastings to keep back his secrets, to change the accounts, to alter the
items, to make him debtor or creditor at pleasure, and by that means to
throw the whole system of the Company's accounts into confusion.

I have shown the impossibility of the Company's having intended to
authorize such a revenue, much less such a constitution of it as Mr.
Hastings has drawn from the very prohibitions of bribery, and such an
exchequer as he has formed upon the principles I have stated. You will
not dishonor the legislature or the Company, be it what it may, by
thinking that either of them could give any sanction to it. Indeed, you
will not think that such a device could ever enter into the head of any
rational man. You are, then, to judge whether it is not a device to
cover guilt, to prevent detection by destroying the means of it; and at
the same time your Lordships will judge whether the evidence we bring
you to prove that revenue is a mere pretext be not stronger than the
strange, absurd reasons which he has produced for forming this new plan
of an exchequer of bribery.

My Lords, I am now going to read to you a letter in which Mr. Hastings
declares his opinion upon the operation of the act, which he now has
found the means, as he thinks, of evading. My Lords, I will tell you, to
save you a good deal of reading, that there was certain prize-money
given by Sujah ul Dowlah to a body of the Company's troops serving in
the field,--that this prize-money was to be distributed among them; but
upon application being made to Mr. Hastings for his opinion and sanction
in the distribution, Mr. Hastings at first seemed inclined to give way
to it, but afterwards, upon reading and considering the act of
Parliament, before he allowed the soldiery to receive this public
donation, he thus describes his opinion of the operation of the act.

_Extract of a Letter from Mr. Hastings to Colonel Champion, 31 August,
1774._

"Upon a reference to the new act of Parliament, I was much disappointed
and sorry to find that our intentions were entirely defeated by a clause
in the act, (to be in force after the 1st of August, 1774,) which
divests us of the power to grant, and expressly prohibits the army to
receive, the Nabob's i