in a few years, he is at length bankrupt in fortune, and for his applause in public life is now at your Lordships’ bar, and his accuser is his country!  This, my Lords, is to be unfortunate:  but there are some misfortunes that never do or ever can arrive but through crimes.  He was a deserter from the path of honor.  At the turning of the two ways he made a glorious choice,—­he caught at the applause of ambition:  which though I am ready to consent is not virtue, yet surely a generous ambition for applause for public services in life is one of the best counterfeits of virtue, and supplies its place in some degree; and it adds a lustre to real virtue, where it exists as the substratum of it.  Human nature, while it is made as it is, never can wholly repudiate it for its imperfection, because there is something yet more perfect.  But what shall we say to the deserter of that cause, who, having glory and honor before him, has chosen to plunge himself into the downward road to sordid riches?

My Lords, I have shown the grievances that existed.  I have shown the means that existed to put Mr. Hastings beyond a temptation to those practices of which we accuse him, even in his own opinion,—­if he will not follow his example in the House of Commons, and disavow this letter, as he has done his defence before them, and say he never wrote it.  That situation which was to afford him a comfortable fortune in a few years he has held for many years, and therefore he has not one excuse to make for himself; but I shall show your Lordships much greater and stronger proofs, that will lean heavy upon him in the day of your sentence.  The first, the peculiar, trust that was put in him, was to redress all those grievances.

My Lords, I have stated to you the condition of India in 1765.  You may suppose that the means that were taken, the regulations that were made by the Company at that period of time, had operated their effect, and that by the beginning of the year 1772, when Mr. Hastings came first to his government, these evils did not then require, perhaps, so vigorous an example, or so much diligence in putting an end to them; but, my Lords, I have to show you a very melancholy truth, that, notwithstanding all these means, the Company was of opinion that all these disorders had increased, and accordingly they say, without entering into all the grievous circumstances of this letter, which was wrote on the 10th of April, 1773, “We wish we could refute the observation, that almost every attempt made by us and our administration at your Presidency for reforming abuses has rather increased them, and added to the misery of a country we are so anxious to protect and cherish.”  They say, that, “when oppression pervades the whole country, when youths have been suffered with impunity to exercise sovereign jurisdiction over the natives, and to acquire rapid fortunes by monopolizing of commerce, it cannot be a wonder to us or yourselves that Dadney merchants