brought it to extreme difficulties within, he has looked to his external resources, as he calls them. He has gone up into the country. I will show, that he has plundered, or attempted to plunder, every person dependent upon, connected, or allied with this country.

We shall afterwards show what infinite mischief has followed in the case of Benares, upon which he first laid his hands; next, in the case of the Begums of Oude.

We shall then lay before you the profligate system, by which he endeavoured to oppress that country, first by residents, next by spies under the name of British Agents; and lastly, that, pursuing his way up to the mountains, he has found out one miserable chief, whose crimes were the prosperity of his country; that him he endeavoured to torture and destroy, I do not mean in his body, but by exhausting the treasures, which he kept for the benefit of his people.

In short, having shown your Lordships, that nɔ 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 order. And I believe it is proper part in its posed by the managers, that one of them shall, as soon as possible, begin with the affair of Benares.

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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 Lordships 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.

TRIAL

OF

WARREN HASTINGS, ESQ.

FIFTH DAY, 17th FEBRUARY 1788.

(MR. BURKE.)

MY LORDS,

THE

HE Gentlemen, who are appointed by the Commons to manage this prosecution, have directed me to inform your Lordships, that they have very carefully and attentively weighed the magnitude of the subject, which they bring before you, with the time, which the nature and circumstances of affairs allow for their conducting it.

My Lords, on that comparison they are very apprehensive, that, if I should go very largely into a preliminary explanation of the several matters in charge, it might be to the prejudice of an early trial of the substantial merits of each article. We have weighed and considered this maturely. We have compared exactly the time with the matter, and we have found, that we are obliged to do, as all men must do, who would manage their affairs practicably, to make our opinion

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opinion of what might be most advantageous to the business conform to the time, that is left to perform it in. We must, as all men must, submit affairs to time, and not think of making time conform to our wishes: and therefore, my Lords, I very willingly fall in with the inclinations of the gentlemen, with whom I have the honour to act, to come as soon as possible to close fighting, and to grapple immediately and directly with the corruptions of India; to bring before your Lordships the direct articles; to apply the evidence to the articles, and to bring the matter forward for your Lordships' decision in that manner, which the confidence we have in the justice of our cause demands from the Commons of Great Britain.

My Lords, these are the opinions of those, with whom I have the honour to act, and in their opinions I readily acquiesce. For I am far from wishing to waste any of your Lordships' time upon any matter merely through any opinion I have of the nature of the business, when at the same time I find, that in the opinion of others it might militate against the production of its full, proper, and (if I may so say) its immediate

effect.

It was my design to class the crimes of the late Governour of Bengal-to show their mutual bearings-how they were mutually aided and

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grew and were formed out of each other. I proposed first of all to show your Lordships, that they have their root in that, which is the origin of all evil, avarice and rapacity to show how that led to prodigality of the publick moneyand how prodigality of the publick money by wasting the treasures of the East India Company furnished an excuse to the Governour General to break its faith, to violate all its most solemn engagements, and to fall with a hand of stern, ferocious, and unrelenting rapacity upon all the allies and dependancies of the Company. But I shall be obliged in some measure to abridge this plan; and as your Lordships already possess, from what I had the honour to state on saturday, a general view of this matter, you will be in a condition to pursue it when the several articles are presented.

My Lords, I have to state to-day the root of all these misdemeanors-namely, the pecuniary corruption and avarice, which gave rise and primary motion to all the rest of the delinquencies, charged to be committed by the Governour General.

My Lords, pecuniary corruption forms not only, as your Lordships will observe in the charges before you, an article of charge by itself, but likewise so intermixes with the whole, that it is necessary to give, in the best manner