[Here the account was read.]

I must now observe to your Lordships, that Mr. Markham and Mr. Hastings have stated the Rajah’s net revenue at forty-six lacs:  but the accounts before you state it at forty lacs only.  Mr. Hastings had himself declared that he did not think the country could safely yield more, and that any attempt to extract more would be ruinous.

Your Lordships will observe that the first of these estimates is unaccompanied with any document whatever, and that it is contradicted by the papers of receipt and the articles of account, from all of which it appears that the country never yielded more than forty lacs during the time that Mr. Hastings had it in his possession; and you may be sure he squeezed as much out of it as he could.  He had his own Residents,—­first Mr. Markham, then Mr. Fowke, then Mr. Grant; they all went up with a design to make the most of it.  They endeavored to do so; but they never could screw it up to more than forty lacs by all the violent means which they employed.  The ordinary subsidy, as paid at Calcutta by the Rajah, amounted to twenty-two lacs; and it is therefore clearly proved by this paper, that Mr. Hastings’s demand of fifty lacs (500,000_l._), joined to the subsidies, was more than the whole revenue which the country could yield.  What hoarded treasure the Rajah possessed, and which Mr. Hastings says he carried off with him, does not appear.  That it was any considerable sum is more than Mr. Hastings knows, more than can be proved, more than is probable.  He had not, in his precipitate flight, any means, I think, of carrying away a great sum.  It further appears from these accounts, that, after the payment of the subsidy, there would only have been left 18,000_l._ a year for the support of the Rajah’s family and establishments.

Your Lordships have now a standard, not a visionary one, but a standard verified by accurate calculation and authentic accounts.  You may now fairly estimate the avarice and rapacity of this man, who describes countries to be enormously rich in order that he may be justified in pillaging them.  But however insatiable the prisoner’s avarice may be, he has other objects in view, other passions rankling in his heart, besides the lust of money.  He was not ignorant, and we have proved it by his own confession, that his pretended expectation of benefit to the Company could not be realized; but he well knew that by enforcing his demands he should utterly and effectually ruin a man whom he mortally hated and abhorred,—­a man who could not, by any sacrifices offered to the avarice, avert the cruelty of his implacable enemy.  As long as truth remains, as long as figures stand, as long as two and two are four, as long as there is mathematical and arithmetical demonstration, so long shall his cruelty, rage, ravage, and oppression remain evident to an astonished posterity.