ransaction, throws not the smallest glimpse of light upon it. We
of the House of Commons have been reduced to form the best legitimate
conjectures we could upon this business, and those conjectures have led
us to further evidence, which will enable us to fix one of the most
scandalous and most mischievous bribes, in all the circumstances of it,
upon Mr. Hastings, that was ever known. If he extorted 40,000_l._ under
pretence of the Company's service, here is again another failure of half
the money. Oh, my Lords, you will find that even the remaining part was
purchased with the loss of one of the best revenues in India, and with
the grievous distress of a country that deserved well your protection,
instead of being robbed to give 20,000_l._ to the Company, and another
20,000_l._ to some robber or other, black or white. When I say, given to
some other robber, black or white, I do not suppose that either
generosity, friendship, or even communion, can exist in that country
between white men and black: no, their colors are not more adverse than
their characters and tempers. There is not that _idem velle et idem
nolle_, there are none of those habits of life, nothing, that can bind
men together even in the most ordinary society: the mutual means of such
an union do not exist between them. It is a money-dealing, and a
money-dealing only, which can exist between them; and when you hear that
a black man is favored, and that 20,000_l._ is pretended to be left in
his hands, do not believe it: indeed, you cannot believe it; for we will
bring evidence to show that there is no friendship between those
people,--and that, when black men give money to a white man, it is a
bribe,--and that, when money is given to a black man, he is only a
sharer with the white man in their infamous profits. We find, however,
somebody, anonymous, with 20,000_l._ left in his hands; and when we come
to discover who the man is, and the final balance which appears against
him in his account with the Company, we find that for this 20,000_l._,
which was received for the Company, they paid such a compound interest
as was never before paid for money advanced: the most violently griping
usurer, in dealing with the most extravagant heir, never made such a
bargain as Mr. Hastings has made for the Company by this bribe.
Therefore it could be nothing but fraud that could have got him to have
undertaken such a revenue. This evidently shows the whole to be a
pretence to co