In short, having shown your Lordships that no man who is in his power is safe from his arbitrary will,—that no man, within or without, friend, ally, rival, has been safe from him,—having brought it to this point, if I am not able in my own person immediately to go up into the country and show the ramifications of the system, (I hope and trust I shall be spared to take my part in pursuing him through both,) if I am not, I shall go at least to the root of it, and some other gentleman, with a thousand times more ability than I possess, will take up each separate part in its proper order. And I believe it is proposed by the managers that one of them shall as soon as possible begin with the affair of Benares.
The point I now mean first to bring before your Lordships is the corruption of Mr. Hastings, his system of peculation and bribery, and to show your Lord
ships the horrible consequences which resulted from it: for, at first sight, bribery and peculation do not seem to be so horrid a matter; they may seem to be only the transferring a little money out of one pocket into another; but I shall show that by such a system of bribery the country is undone.
I shall inform your Lordships in the best manner I can, and afterwards submit the whole, as I do with a cheerful heart and with an easy and assured security, to that justice which is the security for all the other justice in the kingdom.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] 2d year of George II.
[2] See his letter of the 11th of July, 1785, at the end of the Charges.
[3] 13 Geo. III. c. 63, § 10.
[4] 29 February, 1784.