The truth of all these representations is nowhere contested by Mr. Hastings.  It is, indeed, admitted in something stronger than words; for, upon account of the Nabob’s condition, and the no less distressed condition of his dominions, he thought it fit to withdraw from him and them a large body of the Company’s troops, together with all the English of a civil description, who were found no less burdensome than the military.  This was done on the declared inability of the country any longer to support them,—­a country not much inferior to England in extent and fertility, and, till lately at least, its equal in population and culture.

It was to a prince, in a state so far remote from freedom, authority, and opulence, so penetrated with the treatment he had received, and the behavior he had met with from Mr. Hastings, that Mr. Hastings has chosen to attribute a disposition so very generous and munificent as, of his own free grace and mere motion, to make him a present, at one donation, of upwards of one hundred thousand pounds sterling.  This vast private donation was given at the moment of vast instant demands severely exacted on account of the Company, and accumulated on immense debts to the same body,—­and all taken from a ruined prince and almost desolated territory.

Mr. Hastings has had the firmness, with all possible ease and apparent unconcern, to request permission from the Directors to legalize this forbidden present for his own use.  This he has had the courage to do at a time when he had abundant reason to look for what he has since received,—­their censure for many material parts of his conduct towards the people from whose wasted substance this pretended free gift was drawn.  He does not pretend that he has reason to expect the smallest degree of partiality, in this or any other point, from the Court of Directors.  For, besides his complaint, first stated, of having never possessed their confidence, in a late letter[41] (in which, notwithstanding the censures of Parliament, he magnifies his own conduct) he says, that, in all the long period of his service, “he has almost unremittedly wanted the support which all his predecessors had enjoyed from their constituents.  From mine,” says he, “I have received nothing but reproach, hard epithets, and indignities, instead of rewards and encouragement.”  It must therefore have been from some other source of protection than that which the law had placed over him that he looked for countenance and reward in violating an act of Parliament which forbid him from taking gifts or presents on any account whatsoever,—­much less a gift of this magnitude, which, from the distress of the giver, must be supposed the effect of the most cruel extortion.