Your Lordships know very well that we stated in our charge that great
abuses had prevailed in India, that the Company had entered into
covenants with their servants respecting those abuses, that an act of
Parliament was made to prevent their recurrence, and that Mr. Hastings
still continued in their practice. Now, my Lords, having stated this,
nothing could be more regular, more proper, and more pertinent, than for
us to justify both the covenants required by the Company and the act
made to prevent the abuses which existed in India. We therefore went
through those abuses; we stated them, and were ready to prove every
material word and article in them. Whether they were personally relevant
or irrelevant to the prisoner we cared nothing. We were to make out from
the records of the House (which records I can produce, whenever I am
called upon for them) all these articles of abuse and grievance; and we
have stated these abuses as the grounds of the Company's provisional
covenants with its servants, and of the act of Parliament. We have
stated them under two heads, violence and corruption: for these crimes
will be found, my Lords, in almost every transaction with the native
powers; and the prisoner is directly or indirectly involved in every
part of them.
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