of his pleasure and satisfaction) “by his friendship and attention in every matter.  He at all times showed favor and kindness towards us, the ministers of this government; and under his protection having enjoyed perfect happiness and comfort, we are from our hearts satisfied with and grateful for his benevolence and goodness.”

Here, my Lords, you have the character which Hyder Beg Khan gives of Mr. Hastings,—­of the man who he knew had loaded him, as he had done, with every kind of indignity, reproach, and outrage with which a man can be loaded.  Your Lordships will see that this testimony repeats, almost word for word, the testimony of the Vizier Nabob,—­which shows who the real writer is.

My Lords, it is said, that there is no word in the Persian language to express gratitude.  With these signal instances of gratitude before us, I think we may venture to put one into their dictionary.  Mr. Hastings has said he has had the pleasure to find from the people of India that gratitude which he has not met with from his own countrymen, the House of Commons.  Certainly, if he has done us services, we have been ungrateful indeed; if he has committed enormous crimes, we are just.  Of the miserable, dependent situation to which these people are reduced, that they are not ashamed to come forward and deny everything they have given under their own hand,—­all these things show the portentous nature of this government, they show the portentous nature of that phalanx with which the House of Commons is at present at war, the power of that captain-general of every species of Indian iniquity, which, under him, is embodied, arrayed, and paid, from Leadenhall Street to the furthermost part of India.

We have but one observation more to offer upon this collection of razinamas, upon these miserable testimonials given by these wretched people in contradiction to all their own previous representations,—­directly in contradiction to those of Mr. Hastings himself,—­directly in contradiction to those of Lord Cornwallis,—­directly in contradiction to truth itself.  It is this.  Here is Mr. Hastings with his agents canvassing the country, with all that minuteness with which a county is canvassed at an election; and yet in this whole book of razinamas not one fact adduced by us is attempted to be disproved, not one fact upon which Mr. Hastings’s defence can be founded is attempted to be proved.  There is nothing but bare vile panegyrics, directly belied by the state of facts, directly belied by the persons themselves, directly belied by Mr. Hastings at your bar, and by all the whole course of the correspondence of the country.