Hastings pretended to be guided in the settlement of these farms were
for the benefit of this old, decayed, affectionate servant of one year's
standing: your Lordships will judge of that.

I have here spoken only of the beginning of a great, notorious system of
corruption, which branched out so many ways and into such a variety of
abuses, and has afflicted that kingdom with such horrible evils from
that day to this, that I will venture to say it will make one of the
greatest, weightiest, and most material parts of the charge that is now
before you; as I believe I need not tell your Lordships that an attempt
to set up the whole landed interest of a kingdom to auction must be
attended, not only in that act, but every consequential act, with most
grievous and terrible consequences.

My Lords, I will now come to a scene of peculation of another kind:
namely, a peculation by the direct sale of offices of justice,--by the
direct sale of the successions of families,--by the sale of
guardianships and trusts, held most sacred among the people of India: by
the sale of them, not, as before, to farmers, not, as you might imagine,
to near relations of the families, but a sale of them to the unfaithful
servants of those families, their own perfidious servants, who had
ruined their estates, who, if any balances had accrued to the
government, had been the cause of those debts. Those very servants were
put in power over their estates, their persons, and their families, by
Mr. Hastings, for a shameful price. It will be proved to your Lordships,
in the course of this business, that Mr. Hastings has done this in
another sacred trust, the most sacred trust a man can have,--that is, in
the case of those _vakeels_, (as they call them,) agents, or attorneys,
who had been sent to assert and support the rights of their miserable
masters before the Council-General. It will be proved that these vakeels