have been forbidden, at least to certain periods. If this had not been
thought advisable, none in the higher departments of a suspected and
decried government ought to have been kept in their posts, until an
examination had rendered their proceedings clear, or until length of
time had obliterated, by an even course of irreproachable conduct, the
errors which so naturally grow out of a new power. But the policy
adopted was different: it was to begin with _examples_. The cry against
the abuses was strong and vehement throughout the whole nation, and the
practice of presents was represented to be as general as it was
mischievous. In such a case, indeed in any case, it seemed not to be a
measure the most provident, without a great deal of previous inquiry, to
place two persons, who from their situation must be the most exposed to
such imputations, in the commission which was to inquire into their own
conduct,--much less to place one of them at the head of that commission,
and with a casting vote in case of an equality. The persons who could
not be liable to that charge were, indeed, three to two; but any
accidental difference of opinion, the death of any one of them or his
occasional absence or sickness, threw the whole power into the hands of
the other two, who were Mr. Hastings and Mr. Barwell, one the President,
and the other high in the Council of that establishment on which the
reform was to operate. Thus those who were liable to process as
delinquents were in effect set over the reformers; and that did actually
happen which might be expected to happen from so preposterous an
arrangement: a stop was soon put to all inquiries into the capital
abuses.

Nor was the great political end proposed in the formation of a
superintending Council over all the Presidencies better answered than
that of an inquiry into corruptions and abuses. The several Presidencies
have acted in a great degree upon their own separate authority; and as