not now able to return with it.

"Give me an immediate answer to the question which I have herein
proposed, that I may lose no more time in fruitless inaction."

About this time Mr. Hastings had received information of our inquiries
in the House of Commons into his conduct; and this is the manner in
which he prepares to meet them. "I must get money. I must carry with me
that great excuse for everything, that salve for every sore, that
expiation for every crime: let me provide that, all is well. You, Mr.
Middleton, try your nerves: are you equal to these services? Examine
yourself; see what is in you: are you man enough to come up to it?" says
the great robber to the little robber, says Roland the Great to his puny
accomplice. "Are you equal to it? Do you feel yourself a man? If not,
send messengers and dawks to me, and I, the great master tyrant, will
come myself, and put to shame all the paltry delegate tools of
despotism, that have not edge enough to cut their way through and do the
services I have ordained for them."

I have already stated to your Lordships his reason and motives for this
violence, and they are such as aggravated his crime by attempting to
implicate his country in it. He says he was afraid to go home without
having provided for the payment of the Nabob's debt. Afraid of what? Was
he afraid of coming before a British tribunal, and saying, "Through
justice, through a regard for the rights of an allied sovereign, through
a regard to the rights of his people, I have not got so much as I
expected"? Of this no man could be afraid. The prisoner's fear had
another origin. "I have failed," says he to himself, "in my first
project. I went to Benares to rob; I have lost by my violence the fruits
of that robbery. I must get the money somewhere, or I dare not appear