The next, which is the fifth era, is a troubled and vexatious period,—­the era of the independent Subahs of Bengal.  Five of these subahs, or viceroys, governed from about the year 1717, or thereabouts.  They grew into independence partly by the calamities and concussions of that empire, which happened during the disputes for the succession of Tamerlane, and partly, and indeed principally, by the great shook which the empire received when Thamas Kouli Khan broke into that country, carried off its revenues, overturned the throne, and massacred not only many of the chief nobility, but almost all the inhabitants of the capital city.  This rude shock, which that empire was never able to recover, enabled the viceroys to become independent; but their independence led to their ruin.  Those who had usurped upon their masters had servants who usurped upon them.  Aliverdy Khan murdered his master, and opened a way into Bengal for a body of foreign invaders, the Mahrattas, who cruelly harassed the country for several years.  Their retreat was at length purchased, and by a sum which is supposed to amount to five millions sterling.  By this purchase he secured the exhausted remains of an exhausted kingdom, and left it to his grandson, Surajah Dowlah, in peace and poverty.  On the fall of Surajah Dowlah, in 1756, commenced the last, which is the sixth,—­the era of the British empire.

On the fifth dynasty I have only to remark to your Lordships, that at its close the Hindoo chiefs were almost everywhere found in possession of the country; that, although Aliverdy Khan was a cruel tyrant, though he was an untitled usurper, though he racked and tormented the people under his government, urged, however, by an apparent necessity from an invading army of one hundred thousand horse in his dominions,—­yet, under him, the rajahs still preserved their rank, their dignity, their castles, their houses, their seigniories, all the insignia of their situation, and always the right, sometimes also the means, of protecting their subordinate people, till the last and unfortunate era of 1756.

Through the whole of this sketch of history I wish to impress but one great and important truth upon your minds:  namely, that, through all these revolutions in government and changes in power, an Hindoo polity, and the spirit of an Hindoo government, did more or less exist in that province with which he was concerned, until it was finally to be destroyed by Mr. Hastings.

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My Lords, I have gone through all the eras precedent to those of the British power in India, and am come to the first of those eras.  Mr. Hastings existed in India, and was a servant of the Company before that era, and had his education between both.  He is an antediluvian with regard to the British dominion in Bengal.  He was coexistent with all the acts and monuments of that revolution, and had no small share in all the abuses of that abusive period which